


Broken Skin

by IshaRen



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bad Guys Won, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Parenting, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Relationship, Everyone Needs A Hug, Evil Snoke, F/M, Family Drama, Flashbacks, Force philosophy, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Growing Old, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Knights of Ren - Freeform, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Reference to Vomiting, Multi, No abuse within OT3, Old People Still Like Sex, Polyamory, Polyamory Big Bang, Pregnancy, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Tags make it sound darker than it is, Terminal Illnesses, Threesome - F/M/M, no one is happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:22:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 61,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9130336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IshaRen/pseuds/IshaRen
Summary: Snoke won.After only a few short years of open conflict following the destruction of the Hosnian System, Luke Skywalker was dead, the Republic fallen, and a new Empire was born.With his dark protector Kylo Ren, and his silent and damaged Empress Rey at his side, Emperor Armitage Hux’s rise was unstoppable. Secretly, the three of them were lovers, until it came to an abrupt end with the loss of Kylo.It has been sixty years since the events of The Force Awakens. Rey, long estranged from Hux, is called back to him from her home with her Master. She must face the ghosts of the past while her children—both Hux's and Kylo's—fight to secure their place in the galaxy for the next generation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my wonderful beta readers [slutpunk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/slutpunk/pseuds/slutpunk) and [Shadowlass](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowlass/pseuds/Shadowlass). I somehow convinced a hardcore Kyluxer and a dedicated Reylo to read this Reylux fic, and maybe even like it. ;) 
> 
>  
> 
> **Note on Trigger Warnings**
> 
> This is a dark story and lots of bad stuff happens, though much of it was in the past, and is only mentioned in passing, or implied. Please make sure you have read the tags fully.
> 
> A few chapters merit additional warnings (for sexual content, gore and a suicide attempt), but many of the triggers will be referenced throughout the story and no further warning will be given. Note that there is no abuse within the OT3 (Reylux/Kylux/Reyux/Reylo). Though the Reyux begins as a forced marriage, the romantic relationship that develops into Reylux is fully consensual.
> 
> If you have any questions or concerns, or you feel I missed a tag, please feel free comment or message me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan).

_Now my charms are all o'erthrown,_  
_And what strength I have's mine own,_  
_Which is most faint. Now 'tis true_  
_I must be here confined by you_  
_But release me from my bands_  
_With the help of your good hands._  
_Gentle breath of yours my sails_  
_Must fill, or else my project fails,_  
_Which was to please. Now I want_  
_Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;_  
_And my ending is despair_  
_Unless I be relieved by prayer,_  
_Which pierces so, that it assaults_  
_Mercy itself, and frees all faults._  
_As you from crimes would pardoned be,_  
_Let your indulgence set me free_  
_[Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg) words by William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Epilogue 1-20_

  


* * *

  


A hand taps her shoulder and she wakes with a start. The wavering late afternoon sun is still warm, and light stretches off over hills covered in tall, coarse grass into a blank horizon. She is shaded where she sits on her wide balcony in a deep chair, head tilted to nod off once and again.

“Your Highness,” the droid says. “Your son is here.”

She feels him in the Force then and her head lifts. He is already bowing gracefully at her side, looking down at her with his father’s eyes. Always so solemn, even as a child. He holds his black helmet with stiff fingers. She has not seen him for a year or more, not since the last time she met with her daughter on the neutral ground of some Imperial ship.

“Your Highness.” He allows himself a small smile. “Mother.”

Her heart twitches in her chest. His smile holds everything of his father, nothing of her. Of all her children, he hurts the most to see.

She turns away to stare at the hills. “I don’t sense anyone with you,” she says finally. Her son has a name, given to him in love and fear, but he’s known now only by his title: _Taral_ Ren, the Imperial Protector, and his place is at the emperor’s side.

“The emperor and heir are well guarded. Orelia permitted me to come for you.”

This gets her attention, and her eyes fix on the gleaming hilts of the two lightsabers at his waist. One was hers once. She is not sad to be parted from it. 

“Come for me,” she repeats.

“The emperor is dying.”

  


* * *

  


They find their master reading in his library. “My lady,” Snoke greets her, and his lips curl in his crooked version of a smile. He is always pleased when she seeks him out.

Her back and knees have grown too stiff to allow her to bow, so she merely nods her head in respect. “Master.”

He turns to Taral, standing silent and tall beside her. “Taral Ren. You are far from your duties.” It’s a rebuke, if mild.

“Forgive me, Master. The emperor has taken ill, and the heir asked if I would bring our mother to him.” His voice is perfectly controlled, revealing nothing.

She watches Snoke’s face. He knew already; about the emperor, about Taral coming for her. One day she would like to see him surprised.

“Do you wish to go, my dear?” he asks her. His dark eyes are cool as he stares at her, and the fingers of one hand tap on the wooden arm of his chair. She bows her head under the weight of his gaze.

“It will look odd if she does not. The heir needs her presence to remind the people there is already tradition in the Empire. Rumours of another rebellion swirl. There have been two attempts on Orelia’s life in the past year alone,” Taral interjects.

“All the more reason for Taral Ren to remain at his sister’s side.” Snoke’s face is grim as he leans forward.

“I’ll go,” Rey says, tired of being spoken of as if she is not there.

Snoke sits back. It appears that he will let her go, and a tightness in her stomach she had not noticed eases. “Go prepare your ship then, Taral Ren.” Taral bows and leaves. “Your things are being packed, my dear,” he tells her.

She would really, very much, like to see him surprised one day.

He rises from his seat by the fire and takes her hands in his large dry ones. “I will miss you,” he says quietly. 

She doesn’t know what to say, can never give him what he wants. He slowly pulls her into an embrace, and she lifts her arms to loosely wrap them around his waist. His bones are twisted, and he curves awkwardly around her. As it always does, his hand creeps up to stroke her hair. She rests her forehead on his chest and sighs a long, shaky breath.

She had already been a grandmother when she came to him the second time and had thought his affection would dim as she aged. Yet he still holds her as carefully and lovingly as he did that first time, Luke dead at their feet, blue eyes staring forever in horror. She had been held twice over, once by Snoke’s power and again by his long wiry arms. 

“Shh,” he’d said to her rage, to her agony. His fingers had tangled in her hair and she had put her face in the roughness of his robes and wept.

  


* * *

  


“The consort thinks we should move the Imperial capital out of the Core,” Orelia says as they make their way slowly to the emperor’s chambers. Hux had started his reign on Coruscant, the historical seat of power for both republic and empire. Unlike Palpatine, he had no need to pretend at democracy, so he had the old Republic Senate building torn down and a new palace constructed on the site.

Taral is trailing behind them at a distance, speaking in low tones with her first son, Julion, who serves as chancellor to his father.

“A sensible suggestion,” Rey murmurs, not really listening or caring.

Not much has changed here in the last twenty years. The same endless hallways stretch off in every direction, rich red carpet muffling their footsteps. Large windows look out to the streams of traffic in the distance, bright sunlight flashing off transparisteel skyscrapers. As their shuttle came in to land she had been given a quick glimpse of the gardens at the back of the palace. The only outward sign of how much time has passed here are the trees, now grown tall, their graceful branches ready to receive the first leaves of spring. 

Rey is tired, even though she has done nothing but sit on a ship piloted by someone else. It’s late morning here though, and she is disoriented, thinking that it’s almost time to sleep.

Orelia senses Rey’s weariness. She's not strong in the Force, which was a relief. But she has enough sensitivity to alert her to the moods of others and to know when someone is lying. Useful abilities for a politician.

“Mother, are you sure you won’t rest before you see him? He’s stable now, the doctors say. You have time.”

Storm-green eyes watch her face carefully, with gentle concern. Rey feels that twitch in her heart again. Orelia takes after Hux, with her porcelain skin and slim build. But her hair is Rey’s chestnut with a slight wave. Grey weaves through the strands, and there are new lines of strain between her eyebrows and by her mouth.

Her eldest daughter, the Imperial heir, Rey counts as her secret defiance. She has always been under one man’s thumb or another, from Plutt to her first master and then to Snoke. When Hux is gone this tall, upright woman will rule the galaxy. She has a firm sense of duty from her father, and his sharp way of thinking. But Rey gave her a gift that is far more precious: she made certain her daughter would never be left alone.

Orelia’s consort comes from the Hapan Royal House. It was a wise alliance with an ancient power, one that Hux insisted on. The Hapes Consortium is ruled by a queen mother, and the title passes down the matrilineal line. Rey had hidden her pleasure; Hapan men did not rule. She chose a sweet, smart boy for Orelia, and knew he would not be jealous of her power.

“Are you happy with your husband?” she asks, suddenly unsure.

Orelia’s eyes widen, but she answers smoothly enough. “Yes, Mother. You chose well.”

Rey relaxes. “Good.”

  


* * *

  


When they arrive at the emperor’s apartments, Orelia says she will go in first, to prepare him. He has been told Rey is coming, but he is somewhat confused and may not remember.

“No,” Rey says calmly.

“Mother,” Julion says. “He’s weak. Not ready for a confrontation.”

She turns to look at him. He is a reflection of his father, with cool green eyes, copper hair. The tight set of the lips and the clipped voice are all too familiar.

“There won’t be a confrontation unless he wishes to make one.” Tired of her children’s disagreement, she Force-holds the three of them in place and enters the room without knocking. She senses rage from Julion, frustration from Orelia, but only wry amusement from Taral. So like his father.

The room is unchanged, frozen in time like the motes of dust that hang suspended in the bright sunlight streaming through the windows. A heavy hush weights the air, sound and movement swallowed by the richness of the furnishings. The walls are hung with real wallpaper in a shade of pale creamy gold, and touches of gilt and red accent the furnishings. The white marble floors remind her of mornings when the three of them had to drag themselves from the large bed and she would dread that spike of cold when her bare feet landed on the cool stone.

Hux is propped up against some pillows in bed, on the side nearest the door where he always used to sleep. Her throat catches as she looks at him. His eyes are closed and he is dozing, but she can see one side of his face is slacker than the other. When she left his hair was already fading. Now it's a bleached out yellow-white that has only the memory of the flaming brightness it used to carry.

He is thin, his arms little more than sticks. His hands are clasped gently in his lap, and she can see them tremble from time to time. He has grown so old, so shriveled and wrinkled. He reminds her of Snoke now, a pile of collapsing bones. Snoke, who is far older, has not aged in the years she has known him.

It's something of a relief to see that Hux does not have that magic. He always gave the impression he would live forever by sheer will alone. She never saw him ill, rarely tired even. But it seems he is human after all. 

Taral explained to her that the doctors can do no more for him. His neurons are frosty neighbours now, refusing to speak to one another over some tiresome grudge. They glare at each other across fences of leaking blood and forget that they were once friends. Even bacta has its limits.

Hux twitches in his sleep and opens his eyes. She takes a step forward into the shadow of his bedside.

“Armitage,” she says.

He turns his head. His breath stutters, and he makes a small noise. He shrinks in confusion, then slowly, his eyes clear. “Rey,” he exhales, drawing the word out. He frowns then and slurs out something from between lips that will no longer meet and a tongue that no longer knows how to shape words. “I must be dying,” it sounds like.

She nods. “Yes, this is the end.”

  


* * *

  


She has a nap after leaving him to his rest. At dinner they discuss attending the opera that evening. Julion insists, Orelia persuades, and Taral smirks at them. Then her youngest daughter Maritae arrives. Mari is studying under yet another great artist, still trying to find her muse. 

She simply asks Rey to come with them. “Please, Mama,” and Rey relents.

It’s for the good of the Empire that she dresses in a dove-grey silk robe and arranges her long silver hair into a low bun. Over dinner they talked of the need for a Regency while the emperor is ill; they are at a key stage of negotiations with several important parties, and Orelia needs the power of the Empire behind her. Rey offered no comment, glad that she was not in the line of succession. She no longer cares about the Empire, is long past the bitter arguments with Hux over policy and treaties.

She had left him all those years ago filled with that bitterness. The treaty with the slaver Zygerrians that allowed them to continue their trade had been the final straw. “ _Kylo would never have allowed you to do this_ ,” she had thrown at Hux. He had been incensed. Kylo’s name was never invoked in their arguments, the ghost of him never used against one another.

Mari holds her hand through the performance. Mari’s hands are rough and strong from hours spent sculpting the harsh edges of durasteel. Her art is made of reclaimed metal from the last war, or the one before that; it’s difficult to remember as they run together in a stream of death. Rey tries not to be insulted by the irony of her privileged daughter scavenging from the skeletons of ships for her art, tries not to be envious of her freedom.

Mari is lucky in her Force-blindness. She declined to marry, declined to take a position in government, was not required to protect as Taral and his twin are. Instead she travels the galaxy mostly anonymously, taking famous artists as lovers and learning what they will teach her. She inherited Rey’s hunger for education. Mari can cook for herself, speaks half a dozen languages, is a decent pilot, and has lived and been everywhere. To the great scandal of the court, she has even taken non-human lovers and dared to bring more than one home.

The music is bold and bright, but Rey feels the press of eyes on her, the weight of lives in the Force. Her reappearance in public after so many absent years causes a minor sensation. She dampens her power, ensures her eyes are hazel, not gold. The old empress, rumoured to be dead, creaks on. She smiles benignly at everyone, clings to Mari’s hand, and thinks of sitting by the fire with Snoke in silence, his darkness wrapped around her like a comforting blanket.

  


* * *

  


When the hall lights are dimmed and everyone is in bed, she goes to Hux again. A masked knight stands at his door—one she doesn’t know. It takes only a tiny flicker of her power and the knight neither sees her nor hears the door open beside him.

Hux is asleep, but wakes by the time she stands by the bed. He blinks at her slowly, and she feels him open his mind. It’s been so long since he allowed her in.

 _Armitage,_ she whispers in his head.

His mind was always as crisp and cool as an autumn afternoon, copper leaves hanging over an upright trunk. It’s still the same, if vaguer now. The leaves are falling, ready to be crunched underfoot.

He’s out of practice in forming his thoughts into direct communication. She senses her name and a rush of emotion. He is pleased she is here, but afraid. _Too long…_ he thinks.

 _You never came for me,_ she tells him without meaning to. It still stings. No matter what happened, she knows Kylo would have come for her. He would not have abandoned her to rot, away from her children and with only Snoke and droids for company.

He closes his eyes again.

“Pretending to sleep won’t work with me,” she says out loud. Her voice is sharp in the quiet.

His emotions are a morass, pulling her in, showing her his memories. Nights spent alone in the enormous bed, missing both of them so much; a dark shadow guards his back who paces just like his father—sometimes Hux turns his head and catches a quick glimpse of a tall form in a mask and his heart _pounds_ ; staring out the window during council meetings, dreading how she will react when he tells her the latest developments, then a stab of pain when he realizes he doesn’t need to dread anymore. His loneliness and guilt burn her.

 _Never wanted you to go._ He forms the words in his head carefully and projects them to her hard. 

She isn’t sure if he means to be so loud or if he is just rusty. _You never came for me,_ she repeats, _never asked me to return._

 _Tired,_ he sighs into her mind and closes himself off.

It would be a simple matter for her to force herself back in. She could do it without hurting him, without him knowing she was there. That was never her way, though; only Snoke thought such actions normal and innocuous. She has always measured herself against what Snoke would do and has almost always done the opposite.

 _You will come again?_ Hux projects.

“Yes.”

  


* * *

  


Her bed is the same one she slept in for the first years of her marriage, when she barely saw Armitage or Kylo. She had been too absorbed in trying to learn how to love her new children. Too empty inside to notice how the two men watched her when she walked alone in the gardens.

She thinks she was thirty-one years old when she came to the palace as a bride and an empress, though her birth date remains uncertain. Five years she had been with Snoke, and for six years before that with Master Luke. A third of her life spent training; more, if the grinding struggle of Jakku counts. It was a sort of training, in loneliness and sharp metal and mute rage. 

Snoke took those things and honed her to a many-edged blade, all shattered nerves and angles. The power he gave her rests in a dark pit, a black hole at her centre.

Inside her mind there are two distinct versions of herself. Before: she is balanced on the lip of the pit, trying to ignore the muffled cries that escape its gaping mouth. She is fear wrapped in thin bindings of peace and serenity. Her hope still sparks. She is arrogant in her righteousness, certain that she and Luke will prevail. Light will chase away the dark.

After: on the other side of the pit everything is stripped away, subsumed into darkness. She is a brittle shell, hollowed out by Snoke. She is looking away from the abyss, but the power throbs behind her.

The marriage was a kindness to her, he said. She had been turned and she was completely his, but her darkness was unsteady, flawed at its heart. When her training was complete, he named her Rey Ren, and sent her out with her fellow knights to slaughter their enemies. She didn't fail him; that wasn't possible. But afterwards, she was a broken thing for too long, and it made him impatient to have to pull her out of the pit again and again.

This was a better choice for her. She never had to sleep with her husband; technology could do the job much more efficiently. She would be safe, could love her children in peace. So she was sent to be a wife and mother, still twitchy and bursting with the power of the dark side. She had been too thin, and the wedding and coronation holos all had to be retouched so her golden eyes did not show.

It had been Hux who began to bring her back. He was there in the garden one day and offered his arm. It was solid despite his slenderness. They didn’t speak, only walked. It was autumn, and the leaves were turning. His hair glowed in the light, and her hand trembled on him.

Kylo walked behind them, and she felt the weight of his eyes even through his mask. During the years with Snoke she had seen Kylo on and off when he came to train or to report. They ate dinner together once or twice during her training period, when she was judged to be in a human-enough condition for it. She remembers eating ravenously and Kylo looking away in embarrassment.

She smiles in the dark. She will share the memory with Armitage tomorrow. Perhaps he will be amused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	2. Chapter 2

At breakfast Julion is alone in the dining room, waiting for her with a datapad. As soon as she sits down he slides it over. She ignores it and pours herself a cup of tea. His impatience crackles in the air around them. She raises an eyebrow.

He doesn’t flush, just looks at her. “I need you to sign the regency declaration.”

She bites into toast spread with jam. Snoke doesn’t eat, but often sits with her during meals. This feels similar, the _wanting_ her to do something, _be_ something she is not. “I’ll sign it when I’ve seen your father again and spoken with his doctors.” The jam is good; some fruit she isn’t familiar with. She will ask to take a jar or two back with her.

Julion’s brows draw together and his mouth tightens. She tried so hard to love him when he was a boy. Yet somehow he inherited all of his father’s tendency towards stiff pomposity and joined it with her prickly restlessness. She loves him still, but he is not easy to like.

“The negotiations with the Hutts are too important to fail. We need the regency in effect.”

“You think to order me?” She stares him down and watches him squirm in annoyance.

“It’s not an order, of course, Mother. I know Father will be as anxious as I am to safeguard this treaty.”

“We’ll see,” she says, knowing he hates those words more than anything.

He would have made a fine emperor, in his father’s mould. Instead he was raised to serve his sister. It has made him bitter and resentful. He has his father’s ambition, but nowhere to rise to. Taral watches him carefully, she has noticed. She is certain that Taral would deny it, but she has seen.

  


* * *

  


The doctors confirm what Taral told her. Hux will not get better. The bleeding in his brain has been stopped, but another episode may occur at any time. His speech and paralysis may improve, but he will not walk or talk normally again.

He is in a hoverchair by the window looking out over the garden.

“Would you like to go outside?” she asks.

“Ye—e—e,” he manages. His face twists at the effort.

She pushes the chair with the Force. It’s good practice, even if once or twice he starts to veer off towards the wall in the corridors on the way. He makes a strangled sound, but she senses his amusement. Taral walks behind them, and she feels him subtly correcting the chair’s course.

She is used to her power mingling with the inferno that is Snoke, but Taral’s power is different. He is strong, too, but his power reminds her more of waves crashing over rocks, each crest as inevitable as the last. She thinks of an island in a turbulent sea, of soft brown robes and blue unseeing eyes. The old pain hardly registers anymore. Looking back, she smiles at Taral. He wears his mask so she can’t see his expression, but she senses his grin. He is pleased she is here, for her own sake.

It’s spring, and the trees are budding. A few are covered in flowers already, and some of the bulbs are coming up, lending a dash of colour to the dark brown soil. She can feel the life humming quietly here, waiting to explode when the time is right.

Hux’s barriers are down again, so she shares the sensation with him, the silent roots stretching and growing under the soil, the sap flowing through the trees, the buds holding themselves tightly closed until they can hold no longer.

He relaxes into the feeling, and they both look around and breathe. She positions his chair beside a bench and sits. Taral sits beside her, a warm shield against the cool freshness of the air.

It feels familiar to sit here and watch things grow and be with her two men. But this is a travesty of earlier times. Hux is ancient and slumped, and her son is a stranger, his inner workings a mystery. She knows the dark pit inside him and fears there is nothing more. The before-self that looks down into it with fear is only a child. The after-self that looks away from it—who has power like the thunder of waves—is a hollow man who has not loved.

She is old and slumped too. Her bones ache, and she misses her balcony and her master. Suddenly she is angry. Kylo should be here. He was taken from them so long ago, all for nothing. She wonders that Taral can sit next to her, be pleased to see her after what was done to him as she stood by.

She gets up, fists clenched at her sides in her agitation. _Kylo_ , she thinks. He would know what to do to take the edge away. His black pit was even deeper than hers, and he knew what it took to keep from falling into it when the darkness called.

 _Rey_ , a voice says calmly in her mind. Hux’s projection is more measured now; he doesn’t shout as he did the night before.

Taral stiffens, and she knows he overhears. He looks away and down, used to being invisible. She feels him debate if he should leave them in private, half rising to do so.

“It’s all right,” she tells him. “I’ll shield us.”

She sits back down and takes Hux’s hand. His is cool and trembling, but his fingers flutter in a facsimile of a squeeze.

She shows him the memories she had the night before. The first time he walked with her in the garden, the feeling of his arm under her hand. Then the outrageous hunger she had when she ate with Kylo, cramming food into her mouth as he blushed with mortification and fascination.

Hux’s body shakes with a dry laugh. _Would have been quite a sight at state dinners._

That forces a chuckle from her.

 _May I share something with you?_ he asks.

He draws her into the memory. He and Kylo stand in his office watching her walk in a wintry garden. She grasps the feeling from him that they did this whenever they found themselves in that room at the usual time she walked.

  
_(Art by[SAINTVADER](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/))_

It was Kylo’s responsibility to watch her, of course, though she was always guarded by two knights and had her own lightsaber at her hip. The Jedi were long gone, but there were still plenty of their weapons to be had on the black market. That she carried one was considered a curious affectation at best, a sign of a weak-minded religious obsession at worst. Her power wasn't precisely a secret—she was known to have been a knight of Ren—but it wasn't openly discussed. It wouldn’t help anyone to know their empress could kill them with a thought. She had no real need for the weapon; she was one herself.

“She’s lonely,”Kylo said.

“One hardly needs the Force to see that,” Hux replied. “You should go to her. Talk to her about Force things.”

Back then he had not known much about the Force, had seen Kylo use it on occasion, but preferred to rely on conventional weapons and tactics. He did trust in Kylo’s abilities, a trust hard won from years of rivalry and discord.

After the Hosnian system was destroyed, the New Republic declared open war on the First Order. Joined by their Resistance allies, they fought a losing battle from the start. Crippled by the loss of the majority of the Republic fleet and the Senate following the destruction of Hosnian Prime, they still managed to cling onto the fight for six long years. 

When the surrender finally came, Snoke chose Hux to be emperor over Kylo. The tentative working relationship they had built over those years had almost broken irrevocably. But as time passed, Kylo saw what was required of Hux and he was content with his place. It only took another year for him to acknowledge it, and two more to settle into a comfortable friendship with the other man.

Hux hadn’t known then about the dark pit, had only seen the yellow eyes and the sunken cheeks and guessed, a little.

“She won’t want to speak with me. I’m the source of all her pain.” Kylo sounded convinced of this. “She doesn’t really know you, Hux. You’re a clean slate.”

Hux turned to the door, his resolve hardening before he allowed himself to question it. He was her husband, it was only right that he should seek her out on occasion. Within three years they had had one child, with another on the way, and he had never been alone with her in a room, had never felt her skin against his own.

When required she attended functions with him, sat or stood silently at his side, smiling coolly when anyone spoke with her, but saying little in return. Their dressers consulted with each other to ensure her elegant robes complemented his own. When Orelia was born, he presented Rey with a kyber crystal necklace and it flashed red at her throat whenever she wore it, the clear crystals responding to her power.

She intrigued him with her remoteness. Her eyes looked through him into nothing. The desert had marked her, bleak and unforgiving. Whenever he found himself in her company he felt scoured clean by rough sand. Her blank eyes stripped him down to his bones and found the solidity of them to be wanting.

In his past, others—one other, mostly—had called him useless. He felt useless around her. She seemed to contain everything in herself and needed nothing to sustain her. Her disdain, if that was what it was, was bracing. He could not help but see it as a challenge.

He always believed he was born to rule an empire, had formed his entire life around that single goal. An empress had been but a shadow in the corner of his ambitions, never coloured in when he allowed himself to fantasize of the infinite power he would wield one day.

Now he had all he wanted and more. She was his, yet he could not have her, and he found himself wanting her more than anything. His only contact with her was in public, so he took any excuse to touch her: helping her into and out of transports, his gloved hand lingering on the small of her back as he guided her up stairs. He pulled her into his side a little closer than necessary when she stood with him, armoured in her rich robes. She didn’t seem to notice or care. Perhaps it wasn’t disdain, only indifference. Yet her hand was steady on his arm when together they faced the hard eyes of those who waited to see if this empire would stand longer than the last.

 _It wasn’t disdain_ , she tells him now. _I hated those hard eyes and the loud voices and louder laughs during those endless evenings. I was only trying to cope with the onslaught. You steadied me, too._

 _If I had known, I would have done more,_ he thinks.

If he had known. He would have done more. 

The words are a punch to her gut. Rey turns them over and over in her mind until their meaning starts to slide away. She reaches out with hesitant fingers—ready to snatch them back at the first sting of pain—tracing the outlines of another memory she saw once, only once. Kylo’s tiny holo image in the palm of Hux’s hand. Desperate words exchanged; pleas made. 

She stands up, startling Taral and Hux both. Without a word, she walks away. Taral sends an enquiry into her mind, a gentle questioning nudge. She blocks him by reflex, used to Snoke trying to peer into her thoughts.

When she gets back to her room, she lies fully dressed on her bed. 

If he had known, he would have done more. 

Her chest aches. This pain never seems to age. She thinks of the image of herself in Hux’s memory as a storm of whirling grains wandering restlessly through a wasteland. He _had_ known. He had known and he did not do enough. She is as bleak as the desert, hot and dry in her agony. Unforgiving. Yes.

  


* * *

  


A droid wakes her later with a message from Julion. He is enquiring if she has had a chance to speak with the emperor regarding the regency. She blinks hazily up at the droid’s polished face and wonders where she is.

“The regency?” she repeats.

“Yes, Your Highness.” The droid repeats the message. Delivered in its dull monotone, the impatience seething through Julion’s very polite words is somewhat hidden.

The world slides back into place with a painful _snick_ that catches at her flesh. She should not have come back. All the old wounds are reopening. Soon the same old arguments will start, she can feel it. It was ironic that Kylo was the peacemaker of the three of them. He hated to see her argue with Hux. _“We have so many against us, can’t we be united?”_ he would ask in despair as the same paths were worn deeper into the ground between them.

It was strange to think that he had been their anchor. Rey never thought of herself as arrogant, but some part of her had assumed that she was their centre, considering Hux and Kylo had only been companions until she joined them. Yet it was Kylo who had been their star, she and Hux merely wandering comets caught up in his gravity. Without him, she and Hux careened off into open space, only bouncing off each other occasionally as they tried and failed to find a new orbit.

“Your Highness?” the droid questions her again.

“Tell him I’ll speak with the emperor now.”

She drags herself out of bed, goes to the mirror to check her hair. Her reflected face is sagging and crumpled by the press of the pillow. “I’m one third of nothing,” she says aloud, trying the words out. She sighs. Even Kylo would have rolled his eyes at such pitiful melodrama. 

She touches one cheek with a finger, then the other. At night before going to sleep, they had a ritual where each of them placed a single kiss on the cheeks of their lovers. She owned Kylo’s right cheek—the one she scarred—and Hux’s left. She strokes her own left cheek, the one that belongs to Kylo and imagines the brush of his full lips warm against her. Her reflection shows the rounding of her shoulders as she leans forward, her lips pursing. 

  


* * *

  


A surprise waits for her in the corridor. The black-masked figure guarding her door is her daughter, twin to Taral. She carries two lightsabers as well. A double-bladed hilt sits in a holster across her back: “ _Good for fancy swinging, poor for fighting in corridors or small palace rooms_ ,”was Snoke’s verdict. That she still wears it in defiance is a message in itself. At one hip is a much more useful single blade, at the other, a sleek blaster. She is a practical woman when not trying to make a point.

For a moment neither of them move. Then her daughter bows low, very correct. “Your Highness,” she says. She, too, is not a forgiver.

“Taral’linas Ren,” Rey greets her. Kylo’s daughter discarded her birth name; that girl was as dead as Ben Solo had been while Kylo Ren lived. Her title is now her full identity. 

They are still again. It’s been almost fifteen years since they last saw each other in person. Brief, dutiful holocalls occur once or twice a year. Taral’linas is stationed on Hapes guarding Orelia’s children. It’s the old way of the noble houses to foster children so they can grow up away from the pressures of their own family’s court and learn the ways of another. The children are grown now, and Rey has not seen them in those years either.

“The family reunites.” Taral’linas’s tone is unreadable through her vocoder, but bitter anger churns around her. If her brother’s power is waves crashing on dark rocks, she is the whirlpool caught between them, endlessly pulling down, and down again. While he crests, then pulls away to rush in again, she is pure suctioning pressure, relentless and unyielding.

Rey doesn’t know how to answer. While Taral had managed to hold onto some of his humanity, Taral’linas was determined to rid herself of hers. She had lost an arm on an early mission and took pride in her cybernetic replacement. As her father had, she worships Darth Vader. Rey is aware that there have been further replacements, medically unnecessary, but perhaps psychologically needed. It’s easy to understand how destruction could become a comfort, how vulnerable flesh could become something to be excised.

Truthfully, Taral’linas was a terrible candidate for watching over children, but Rey had hoped—futilely, it seemed—that they might soften her. In the end there had not been a choice anyway, as there so often wasn’t. The Hapan court would not accept male guards, so a cohort of female knights and Taral’linas Ren were sent.

“Have you seen the emperor?” Rey asks into the brittle silence.

Somehow Taral’linas manages to sneer through her mask. “Why would he want to see your bastard child?”

Rey sighs. It’s unfortunate that Hux tends to favour his own children over Kylo’s, even as Kylo’s son stands at his back. Yet another of their points of contention. “I need to speak with him. You may accompany me, or not, as you wish.”

Silence is her reply. But as Rey heads down the hallway to Hux’s quarters, a slim shadow trails after her.

  


* * *

  


Hux’s rooms are in an uproar. She has delayed too long, and Julion has taken it upon himself to badger his father directly. Hux’s thoughts hit her in uneven shouts as Taral tries to translate for the benefit of Julion and Orelia.

Hux is just as slumped in his hoverchair as he was earlier, even more diminished now the others tower over him in their obscene youth and health. _My mind is as sharp as it ever was_ , _and even at my worst I’m ten times sharper than anyone else in this room,_ Hux is ranting.

“It’s just until you’re better, Father,” Orelia is trying to soothe.

“What is this?” Rey asks and everything stops as they all turn to her.

The frustration on Taral’s face is arrested as he sees his sister hover at Rey’s back.

“Linas,” he breathes and moves to embrace her. Their hug is awkwardly silent, punctuated by the quiet whir of servos as she lifts her arms and drops them again to her side. She bows to the emperor and Orelia.

“Take your mask off, sister,” Orelia says. It’s an invitation, but her tone commands.

Rey is afraid of what she will see, what the years have done to Taral’linas, and what Taral’linas has done to herself. She takes a quick glance first, but not much has changed. A few implants dot Taral’linas’s forehead, one curving around her eyebrow to sit on her cheekbone. She still has her father’s pale skin and black hair, but her hazel eyes—Rey’s eyes—are inky black now, with deep red pupils. Replacements then. It’s not so bad. But her eyes, the only one of her children who had her eyes…

Mari, who had been cocooned on the bed, emerges from the blankets. “A full family reunion,” she says and flashes her bright smile. Those outside the family could be forgiven for thinking her naïve in her emotional reactions. But she does nothing without her father’s calculation, even as her mother’s smile scrunches up her face in pure joy. Her embrace with her half-sister is much warmer than Taral’s. She has been a frequent visitor to Hapes over the years. 

Mari is the only naturally-conceived child Rey has of Hux, growing up in those desperate, agonizing years when Kylo was torn away from them and the twins were lost to darkness. Somehow, as Rey did on Jakku, she retains her hope.

 _Tell them_ , Hux projects to Rey, _tell them there is no need for this._

She concentrates a moment, grasping at each mind in the room and quickly weaves them to hers so all can hear his words.

_I’m not finished. You can see that, surely. With a translator I can still conduct the negotiations—_

“Father, that’s impossible and you know it.” Julion’s voice is strained, and she senses that this argument has been circling now for some time.

Rey turns to Hux. He still lolls helplessly in his chair, but his eyes are fiery and there is an intensity about him, as if he is doing all he can to force his body to show something of its former obedience to his will.

“You won’t live long enough to complete the negotiations. Let your daughter do what she’s been raised to. You’ve been selfish long enough.” Rey’s words fall heavy into the room. She examines the faces in front of her. Orelia’s mouth gapes slightly, and her eyes are wide. Julion’s eyes are narrowed to a slit, but his expression is difficult to decipher. Taral’s eyebrows are raised, but he isn’t shocked.

“Mama!” Mari cries. She swoops over to encircle Hux gently in her arms. “You’ll make him worse.”

Hux is full of wounded rage and twitches irritably at his daughter. He never liked to be comforted during an argument. _I have sacrificed everything for this fam—_ he begins.

“What have _you_ ever sacrificed? And no, the things you lost out of carelessness and lack of attention do not count.” Rey is furious. This argument raged back and forth for the seventeen years they were together after Kylo was gone. A hundred times they have gone over this. Never with such an audience, however.

 _Carelessness!_ It seems it is possible for someone to sputter in their thoughts.

“The evidence of it stands behind you and behind me. Sacrifices have indeed been made, but _not by you_.” Rey clips off the final few words, one at a time. She can feel power surging and growing around her, gorging on her anger. It swells against her, and she slowly lets it permeate her skin. Her eyes burn and she knows they are golden again.

Hux’s slack face shutters closed. _You always blamed me for his recklessness. He did it for you. Why do you not fault him for his stupidity?_

“Oh, I do. I curse him for it daily.” It’s true. She blazed with it still. _Kylo_ , she thinks and from the flinch of the others around her it appears she unconsciously burned the thought down the link she has formed with them.

“At least he did not stand by. At least he doesn't sit by a warm fire with the one who did this. At least he doesn't long to go home to him.” Taral’linas’s voice behind her cracks like frost over green grass. Even without her vocoder, her voice has a metallic tinge. It’s without emotion, almost without humanity.

Rey whirls to her. Once, she saw the pit in Taral’linas’s mind. It’s a thing of horrors, scraped raw into her core and spilling over with oily tendrils of darkness. A young girl shudders away from it on one side, weeping and calling for her mother. On the other side, a young woman stands, her flesh shorn away to expose the wet glisten of muscle and tendons. Blood drips down her limbs, a rich red that drains into the dark pit and is sucked away into the whirlpool of her power. Everything was taken from her, a drop at a time.

Rey turns away from her with a spurt of shame, realizing that she has impressed this image-memory on everyone in the room. Orelia is pale and has turned away to look out the window, while Taral has gone very still, and unexpectedly, Julion is the one holding his gaze. Something passes between them, a knowledge and depth of feeling that surprises her. Mari kneels on the floor, her hands covering her face.

Another image forms, this time not from her own mind, but from Taral’linas’s. The young woman with the pit at her back is older now, with black eyes. Her skin is covered in a sheen of liquid metal. She gleams against the darkness behind her, but she is hard, so hard.

“It’s been almost forty years, and you still use him as an excuse for your failures.”

Rey stiffens at Taral’linas’s words. No one understands, they cannot understand. “You think I mourn only him?”

No answer comes this time. She looks at Hux. His eyes are unreadable even as she is pressed into his mind.

_Give me the document, I will sign it. Then all of you can leave me alone._

It only takes a moment to impress his thumb and scan his retina. He shakily enters his code, and there is a small ping from the datapad. In the space of a minute, he is emperor in name only, his power given to his daughter to carry for him. Orelia is now regent. He shrinks a little in his chair and bows his head. She releases the web of minds she was holding together and goes to leave with the others.

 _Rey?_

She stops.

_Will you stay for awhile?_

She waits until the room has emptied, then goes to her knees before him. _She is right. I should have gone with him. Why didn’t he tell me? Why did he leave me behind?_

Hux’s good arm raises slowly, his hand goes to touch her hair, then he remembers and brushes her cheek instead with shaky fingers. _He loved you, and them._

 _He knew he wasn’t strong enough. He knew that together we might have done it. Why did he leave me behind?_ A part of her is always a child on Jakku, being left behind to desperate scrabbling and loneliness. When it had happened again it had been almost unbelievable; that something so awful could happen more than once.

Hux shakes his head, a jerky half-finished movement when it turns to his bad side. She feels him considering his words, but she doesn’t try to read what he rehearses before he chooses to project to her.

_Perhaps he was a coward too, as we all have been._

  


* * *

  


Dinner is subdued. Rey eats with her children and grandchildren, the latter having travelled from Hapes with Taral’linas. Orelia’s eldest daughter Verina, a young woman of twenty-five, is the new heir. Verina is ready to be married and Orelia’s messages to Rey over the past months have been full of dilemmas over possible choices. Negotiations are ongoing with several Elder Houses, one of the many things that can proceed now that the regency is in effect.

Verina is quiet, but watches and listens carefully. She has learned her statecraft at the feet of the Hapan Queen Mother herself. It’s a somber court by all accounts, but intrigue thrives wherever there is power. Rey is pleased that Hux’s Force-blindness is proving stronger than her own Force-sensitivity when it comes to their progeny. The girl has only the merest hint of the Force whispering in her ear, just enough to help her do her job well.

Julion is the first to address Verina directly. “I understand Cosinga Palpatine was seen again this past month on Hapes. The third time this standard year.”

Verina has the self-possession not to blush. “Lord Palpatine often undertakes business with the Consortium on behalf of his family on Naboo.”

Orelia looks at her daughter. “An alliance with the Palpatine family would be beneficial for the history of it, of course. But theirs is a lesser house, and they were a great supporter of the New Republic before it fell. I think we can do better.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Rey imagines a new Palpatine legacy in the Empire. Some of Sheev Palpatine’s power may have trickled down through the years, waiting to burst forth again. No, the family of the last Sith was not the place to look for a husband. She clears her throat.

“A husband without any history of Force-sensitivity may be preferable,” she says. It immediately feels like treachery, and she reflexively checks the shields around her mind. He cannot hear her, she reassures herself. No one here will tell him. Still, she sinks into the Force and searches for any murmur that her words reached her master. She is such a coward.

Uneasy glances and shifting in seats greet this pronouncement. They are all so afraid.

  


* * *

  


She excuses herself after dinner and heads to her bedroom. She is exhausted, but somehow her feet carry her past her door to continue down the hall to Hux’s room. Again, she slips past the knight on guard without him being aware of her.

Hux is in bed asleep. She stares down at his face in the dark and listens to him breathe. He snores gently, a small lump of shadows in the large bed. She brushes at his mind. It’s blank, the empty time between dreams. With an undignified snort, he pulls himself awake, somehow sensing he’s not alone.

“R–r–eyyy,” he sighs out.

A fierce protectiveness fills her. He was always so slight and now there is nothing to him at all. She wants to grab hold of him and pull him back from the place he is disappearing into. After so many years apart it should feel like nothing to see him fading. But he has always been a presence in the back of her mind, she always has known that he _exists_ somewhere. Non-existence is frightening. Watching him slowly cease to exist even more so. At least when Kylo left them, he was gone all at once. It was simple; he went away and did not return.

 _I don’t want you to go away,_ she tells Hux, pressing it into his mind like a command, with the Force behind her words.

He blinks up at her, and she can see the shine of the whites of his eyes in the dim light. _I don’t think my life-force can be compelled that way,_ he says, almost amused at her efforts.

She huffs out, half laughing at herself, half scoffing at his disbelief.

 _Why didn’t you come for me?_ she asks again.

It’s his turn to sigh. He reaches out to her with his good hand. She takes hold of it and laces her fingers through his.

_I didn’t want you to go, but I was relieved when you were gone. The arguments … we didn’t know how to be together without him. I was tired. It felt better when I didn’t have to see you. Didn’t have to remember that we were supposed to be three, not two._

She closes her eyes. The skin on his hands is paper thin but so, so soft. She rubs her thumb against him, learning the texture. Leaning over, she kisses his left cheek. It’s the paralysed one, so he likely doesn’t even feel it. He makes a small sound though, a wordless plea. She puts her right cheek to his lips and his warm breath ghosts over her. His mouth trembles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note this chapter includes a sex scene which takes place in the scene that begins: _She prepares for bed carefully in her room_ , and runs to the end of the scene. If you'd like to skip it, you won't miss anything important.

The next day finds him in better spirits. They go to the garden again in the company of one of the knights. Taral’s place is now with Orelia. The knight waits at the entrance to the garden, within eyesight, but out of hearing distance.

 _Will you sleep in my bed tonight?_ Hux asks unexpectedly. His boldness is startling; something she had forgotten. But one doesn’t become a general before thirty-five by avoiding risk.

She is surprised enough to respond out loud. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you,” she says.

His lips thin. _Say no, if that’s what you mean._

The response is so completely Hux that tears fill her eyes. _All right._

They are silent for several minutes. It’s warmer than the previous day, bright and sunny. In the distance she can see the spires of the old Jedi Temple, now home to the Knights of Ren. Any Force-sensitives found in the stormtrooper program, or elsewhere, are taken there to train. The most powerful, those unlucky few, are sent directly to Snoke for further training. 

She tries to imagine what it was like when ten thousand Jedi roamed the galaxy, and what it was like afterwards when it all came to an abrupt halt. Cautiously, she calls the light, using the living things around her to catch hold of it when it tries to slip out of her grasp. Some describe the dark side as cold and pitiless, but she has always found it warm and soothing. The light is detached, stern almost. It covers her for a moment and everything shines, but it soon slides away, finding nothing in her to adhere to.

 _I’m sorry,_ Hux says.

She drags her awareness back to him. _For?_

_Not coming for you, not asking you back. I regretted it every day. After the relief faded I missed you. It was always you, Rey. I loved him too, but it was always you._

She has always known this of course, as Kylo did too. It would have been impossible to hide such a thing between them.

 _You don’t know how I longed for you._ He draws her into a memory.

When she was pregnant with Julion, he and Kylo came upon her one day idly staring out a window. She was alone, her guards missing. Kylo asked her where her knights were, his voice tight with anger.

Her eyes flashed gold as she looked up at him. “I wanted some peace.” Then her body jerked and Hux leapt forward to grab for her arm. “Just the baby kicking,” she said, a little breathless.

Kylo turned away to speak into his comlink, looking for the errant knights.

Hux had stood beside her hundreds of times, but never without the watchful eyes of others. Her soft robes had a high waist, flowing over the growing mound of their child. He stared at her hand caressing over her belly and his brain stalled.

“Want to feel?” she asked.

His hand was on her before he could think. He held his breath until he felt a gentle flutter, then a pulsing against his palm. Without meaning to, he rubbed a slow circle on the spot. Her stomach was hard under his fingers. The pulse came again, a more definite thump.

“That’s your son,” she said, and smiled up at him.

He realized then he was stroking her belly and holding her arm, grinning back at her like a fool. His smile evaporated as he panicked and withdrew.

Rey laughs lightly at the memory. _I knew_.

  


* * *

  


She prepares for bed carefully in her room. First, she brushes out her long hair and pulls it into a simple braid to hang over her shoulder. Then she puts on a long cream-coloured short-sleeved nightgown. She looks mournfully at her bare arms, spotted and shrunken with age. At least the sagging wrinkles hide some of the scarring. It’s hard to remember her younger body now. Smooth skin, muscles hiding underneath softness, joints that moved with ease. Age is a cruel thing. It takes all the padding away just when it’s needed most and leaves only bone and sinew underneath dangling furrows.

It surprises her how shy she feels under his gaze. He’s lying under the covers on his back, arms at his sides, head turned against the pillow to look at her. She feels a spark of desire from him and something answers in her. The bed was always too high, forcing her to clamber in. She surveys the mountain of it now and her knees tell her no. Then she spots a small stool fixed to the floor alongside and the relief is intense.

The lights are on a little so they can see each other, and his eyes glint in amusement at the play of emotions across her face. As she awkwardly climbs over him, he starts to shake with laughter and a few choked sounds escape his throat. Finally she is lying down flat on her back and can laugh too. It hurts her chest and face and she gasps for air.

 _Remember that time when you hit Kylo…_ he starts.

She groans. _How can someone’s nose bleed so much from just bouncing off an elbow?_

_Ha. It was quite the nose. Your daughter inherited it. I noticed today when I saw her in profile._

Rey frowns. _It’s not so large surely._

_Perhaps not._

They are silent for a time. She’s lying to Hux’s right, his good side. His hand creeps over to take hers. His grip is weak and shaky, not just from the damage in his brain. They are both trembling a little.

 _Do you remember the first time here? The three of us?_ she asks him.

This time it’s her turn to pull him into a memory. That moment in the corridor was a turning point, leading to the day only a week or so later that he appeared in the gardens as she walked and asked if he might walk with her.

He observed her reactions and prepared his strategy as carefully as any in the conflicts with the Republic or the Resistance. He had won that war most decisively and did not intend to see his first failure here.

She skips past the memory of their first kiss, in the garden at dusk, Kylo’s head turned away politely to one side, but the mask hiding where his eyes went. Hux’s campaign had been slow, a gentle courting. A squeezed hand in the back of their shuttle, a soft kiss on her jaw when they said goodnight. It felt like they had all the time in the world.

Inevitably it came to Rey in his bedroom, standing much as she had this evening with her long braid hanging over her shoulder, watching as his eyes lit with desire. It was some months after Julion’s birth, and her body still retained a little of the roundness she had gained during pregnancy. 

Kylo hovered by the door waiting to be dismissed, his helmet in his gloved hands. He had been a constant presence, of course, seated across from them in their transport, at Hux’s back as he kissed her, a vigilant guard in the gardens. It would have been kind of him to turn away, to play blind and deaf to quiet, wet sounds of tongues and lips, to muffled moans and the whisper of cloth being moved aside. 

He was not a kind man.

“You’re leaving?” she asked him.

He turned to her in surprised annoyance. His fingers tightened on his helmet. “Watching isn’t my preference,” he said stiffly.

She smiled at that, thinking of kisses in long grass, of what he asked for when the war was over. “We don’t need a watcher. Stay.” 

They hadn’t discussed it, but she knew how Hux thought of his broad-shouldered protector in the secret depths of his mind. She had considered it a form of self-defence to undertake a furtive search of those orderly canyons where everything lined up so neatly. He had his own sort of pit at the bottom of the oldest one and he drew on it for his own form of power: a fearlessly agile mind, strength of will, a disciplined heart. 

Hux, too, had not been blind to those dark eyes watching. He had not been able to fully sense the need behind them, but he felt enough. 

Kylo’s face had always revealed far too much of his emotion, a side effect of going masked too often. He flushed a bright red and his eyes glowed. She felt him touch her mind, a subtle request.

She went to him, still pressed up against the door, clutching his helmet like a lifeline. When she touched his cheek, tracing the scar she gifted, a shudder went through him. His eyes were drawn to Hux behind her, checking.

She stood on tiptoe and pulled him down to kiss her. His mouth was as she remembered, softer than Hux’s, but just as warm and wanting. He broke their contact and pressed his forehead to hers, his breath quick and ragged.

“I didn’t think after…” he whispered.

“I know.”

Hux came to them and wrapped his arm around her waist from behind. With his other arm he reached out and took Kylo’s hand, the leather of his gloves creaking as their fingers laced together.

She and Hux unwrapped Kylo, pulling away thick black cloth, layer by layer. His skin underneath was covered by another layer, scars woven one on top of the other into a garment of remembered pain. His eyes were almost black as he looked down at them, defiant in his nakedness.

She slid out of her own dressing gown to reveal the matching scars she wore under it. The silvered ones were old memories. They shone with the purity of good clean slices from indifferent durasteel. The other, newer ones absorbed any light that tried to illuminate them. They swallowed the brightness around her, blurring her body with a delicate lacework of shadows that moved out of focus just as an eye managed to trace them.

“You are made of darkness,” Hux said in wonder, staring at his pale hand on her hip. He was starting to understand. She sensed his fear then, but it was all twisted up in the excitement of his triumph. He was victorious, another strategy executed to flawless perfection. His hand went to her breast, brushing her nipple. She sighed and turned to him.

When he was naked, they climbed onto the bed—that high bed!—and it was her first moment of uncertainty. Hux’s pale skin gleamed between them, almost like a beacon. If he had been another sort of person, a healing sort, he might have chased away the shadows simply from the light of his flesh.

He was not that person; instead he revelled in their darkness. It was the closest he could get to the power of the dark side, a power a part of him always longed for. He was beginning to understand the cost of it, yet still he yearned.

The pause as they examined one another ended when Kylo pulled Hux down onto his broad chest into a hard kiss. She watched them, admiring the shifting gloom of Kylo tangled with Hux’s pearlescence. They were relieved. Glad that they could do this together now and it would not be awkward or fraught with any meaning other than that the three of them came to the bed of their own will and it was sweet.

It had been a long time since she had done this, and never before with two others. A few faces flashed through her mind, but the details of them were smudged. One pair of dark eyes—not a lover, a friend—remained to accuse her until she blinked them away as a strong arm drew her down to join them. 

The past was forgotten as she surveyed the new territories she had staked her claim to. Kylo was a mountain she was determined to learn how to climb, all granite peaks and speckled valleys. Hux was a lean shoreline she was ready to wander forever, eyes searching the soft white sand for little treasures to caress and exclaim over.

Kylo’s large hands slid over her slowly. “Is this all right?” he would ask. “Is this all right?” He understood more than anyone what it meant to have a choice.

Hux was quiet, only murmuring his agreement to Kylo’s questions when they were aimed at him. He was holding himself back, she realized. Fear was a spike in his heart. Even as she straddled over him, smearing his length with her wetness, a door was barred and shut. Kylo knelt behind her, holding her close with his lips at her neck.

He lifted her and she grasped at Hux, positioning him at her entrance. She was weightless, floating down onto him only to be drawn back up, then released to feel him again, stretching and filling her. Hux’s fingers were slim and clever at her folds. He cried out for the first time when Kylo shifted her angle slightly and he was able to enter her more deeply.

She contemplated Hux’s face and thought of him in his Imperial robes, white cloak sweeping out behind him as he walked. His emperor face was cold and remote. This was a whole other man, his pale green eyes dazed as he looked up at them, biting at his lip. She took his hand and he squeezed reassuringly. Her other hand gripped onto Kylo’s thick thigh. It was a strange thing to be required to do nothing at all but clench the muscles inside her to pull Hux closer so that she could feel every inch of him. Kylo took her full weight, keeping the pace measured and careful. He mouthed at her ear, his voice a quiet rumble. “Is this all right?”

It was good, very good. The angle was right to hit that spot inside that ached. She was deliciously full and Hux’s fingers kept a steady rhythm as they circled her, bringing her closer and closer. Kylo was hard and hot behind her, pressed close, rubbing himself a little against her lower back as he steadily moved her up and down.

It wasn’t enough. She needed something. Her mind drifted to the smell of hot metal under a blazing sun, to fingers pulling and yanking to get something free, some essential broken piece that would feed her. “Harder,” she said.

Kylo licked at her ear again. She touched his mind and saw there what she needed. Pounding, pistoning, screwing, hammering—all the words that came from fast, rough machines—he wanted it too, was barely holding himself to this ponderous tempo. The feel of her ear under his teeth was all he held onto. 

“Yes,” she said, wanting only to set him free. He paused, leaving her half hanging in the air.

“No,” he said and resumed.

Hux seemed barely aware of what was passing between them. The movement of his fingers was jerky and uneven against her and he clutched at her hand tightly. His eyes were closed and he had a look of utmost concentration on his face.

She squirmed a little in Kylo’s grip. _Harder,_ she insisted in his mind, pushing at him. 

He groaned into her neck. _No more pain._ _Don’t want to hurt you again. Ever._

They were distracted by Hux’s climax. He let out a strangled cry as he came, his eyes flying open to meet hers. She looked deep into them as she tightened around him, feeling as he pulsed and twitched inside her. Small answering flutters echoed from her muscles. His eyes were empty and distant. He wasn’t there with them; she didn’t know where he had gone.

Kylo lifted her off and laid her gently on her back. _Please_ , she said as their mouths met. 

He slid home smoothly in one long push. _Is this all right?_

_Harder._

He bent over to her ear and Hux’s fingers found her nipples, rolling and pinching them. “Harder,” she said, looking up into Kylo’s dark eyes. He stroked in and out slowly while Hux’s hand went between her legs again.

 _Please. I need—_ She felt a spreading numbness, like she was losing feeling in her limbs, in herself. Darkness hovered around them, jagged shapes at the edge of her vision, swelling forward at her call, then being firmly pushed away by Kylo. The dark side was passion and he was preventing it from flowering between them, afraid of the pleasure-pain of it, denying them the thing they were attuned to.

“Harder,” she begged. _Harder._

Kylo was gasping in her ear now at the effort of holding away the darkness, like a sticky sweet treat that he held high above her desperately grabbing fingers.

It was Hux who listened, who gave her what she needed. The thwarted dark, frustrated from its inability to reach its favoured daughter, found a way in. A tendril of it wrapped around each of Hux’s arms, eagerly crawling down to those slender, nimble fingers. It flowed out from them over her nipple, clamping like a hungry mouth, needle-like teeth embedding themselves in tender flesh. She cried out at the sensation. _Almost enough. Almost._

His hand at her slick folds pressed more firmly. Tiny jolts of electricity seemed to jump from the tips of his fingers, making her writhe and moan.

Kylo grunted against her and abruptly stilled, burying himself inside her as he came. His teeth found the vulnerable skin of her neck and he bit down, marking her even as he soothed the soreness away with the flat of his tongue. _Yes._ The tremulous pain of it filled her vision and she fell apart, internal muscles contracting again and again around the hardness inside. A long raw note was drawn from her, an animal sound harsh with the memory of agony.

All was silent and she wasn’t sure if the sound had only keened in her mind or had been torn from her throat. She turned her head away from them and curled her tongue in her mouth, touching an empty space where a tooth had been. The gum was smooth and soft as she licked at it, tasting the shape of the loss. The tooth had rotted in her mouth and she had paid three full portions for someone to pull it out. A long time ago now, another girl, another life, yet the rot had crept up through the passages where the roots had been.

Lips were at her neck, a hand on the loosened skin of her belly. Dark hair fell over her eyes and a low voice whispered in her ear. “Was that all right? Are you all right?”

  


* * *

  


Hux is breathing shallowly beside her and she can feel the racing of his heart. She worries that she has over-excited him, that she might bring on another attack.

“Are you all right?” she asks and his response is a choked sound, almost a sob.

 _I had forgotten._ His thought-words are full of anguish. _Forgotten how he was with you. I think he loved you more than I ever did._

She sighs and rolls onto her side to face him, lifting their joined hands and resting them gently on his chest. “It’s not a competition,” she says severely.

 _Everything was…_ is his only answer.

 _I think you won every contest you ever tried,_ Emperor _Hux._ She is in a mood to tease him.

 _Ha. Look at me now, dethroned by my own children._ He is filled with sadness, his definition lost, blurring around the edges.

She frees her hand from his and strokes the good side of his face. _They will do well. You have taught them everything they need to know._

He huffs a little. _They are just children._

 _Orelia is almost fifty! You were barely forty when you were crowned and as innocent as a babe._ She smiles at him, still hoping she can bring him out of his mood.

 _Innocent…_ Another choked sound escapes him, this time more like a laugh. It’s dry and a little harsh, but it’s something.

 _Where did you go that night? When you weren’t with us?_ She shows him his face again from her memory—all flushed and dazed—but closed too.

He stares up at the ceiling. _I was thinking of something Kylo said. I was trying to hide it from you. It’s not easy being around people who can read your every thought._

She can almost taste the sourness of his tone. _You know we had a rule about that,_ she says gently _._

 _I know you_ said _you did._

Her cheeks heat a little in shame. She has just shown him how she wandered through his mind without his knowledge or permission. _It was just that once. I’m sorry._

_I understand why you did it._

_What did he say? That you were trying to hide._ She circles back to her original question.

He shows her the memory in response.

It was an evening after they returned from the opera. Hux’s courtship had been proceeding smoothly enough. From sedate walks in the garden to a small kiss stolen behind the juna bush—heavy with ripe berries—to fumblings in the back of their shuttle and a regular goodnight kiss at her door that seemed to last longer every time.

That night something had changed. Rey’s eyes were bright as they walked to her room, his arm slipped around her slim waist. They were not alight with the power of the dark side; that was a rare event now. Instead they shone with a new kind of happiness, or a fleeting joy at least, to be in his company. Hux couldn’t remember anyone ever being excited to be around him. It was intoxicating.

As they reached her room, she suddenly took a step towards him, pressing him to the wall. He made a startled sound that was swallowed by her mouth over his. She moulded herself to him and draped her arms around his neck to bring his lips closer to hers. He went to hold her, but his arms were pinned to the wall at his sides and he couldn’t move.

He struggled for only a moment, then relaxed. Inside his head was buzzing, a sort of static as he gave up his control to her. He was reduced to the essential elements required for the moment—breath, lips and tongue. That’s all he was and all he needed to be.

Kylo leaned against a doorframe a few paces away, watching as he always did, mask hiding any expression he might be wearing. When Rey pulled away and Hux opened his eyes, he hazily noted Kylo’s hands clenched at his sides, those wide shoulders rising and falling perhaps a little more quickly than normal.

She smiled at Hux and kissed the tip of his nose playfully. “Goodnight,” she said and went into her room, only releasing him once the door closed behind her.

Kylo said nothing as Hux peeled himself from the wall and they went down the corridor to enter Hux’s office. Hux sat down to do some work, stared blindly at reports on his datapad while Kylo paced back and forth at the window, peering down into the darkness of the garden below them.

Hux sighed as the letters blurred in front of his eyes and went to stand at the window too.

“Things are proceeding well,” Kylo said abruptly.

“Yes, rather well, I think.”

“I felt her Force-holding you. You liked it.” Kylo still wore his mask, so his voice was interpreted by the flat mechanical tone of the vocoder. But he leaned over Hux, closer than was comfortable, and Hux felt as if he were being accused of something. Then he realized he was frozen again, just from the ankle down, so that his feet were leaden weights attached to his legs.

“I liked it when _she_ did it.” He glared up at Kylo and the sensation was gone, leaving him unsure he’d felt it at all.

“You are half in love with her,” Kylo said. Another accusation.

“Take that mask off, I refuse to talk to you with it on.” Not the first time he’d had to make that demand, nor the last. As usual, there was a lengthy pause until Kylo deemed his point made and removed the heavy helmet. He didn’t want to appear to follow Hux’s orders, not directly at least.

Kylo’s uncovered eyes glittered, but his expression was unreadable. “More than half,” he said and set his helmet down with a thump on Hux’s desk.

“Love. I’m not sure what that is.” Hux tried to sound dismissive, rather than afraid.

Kylo shook his head at him, the black waves of his hair catching the light. “Your mother loved you.”

Hux rounded on him. “I will thank you not to read my mind.” Another demand made more than once, and ignored as many times.

Kylo gave Hux one of his rare, crooked grins. “Your mother loved you,” he repeated, the smile fading away. “You remember it. Rey doesn’t. No one has ever loved her except Snoke, in his own twisted way. She’s afraid of you.”

Hux didn’t know what to make of that. Why should she be afraid of him? She could crush him like an insect. Then he heard the click of a door closing while he was held, unable to move to follow, and he saw himself pinned to the wall, never her. He was the one with his back to the juna bush, the dark berries staining his pristine white cloak. Her legs were over his in the shuttle, her hand on his jaw as they kissed, ready to push him away. She always had an escape route.

The love thing, well, that wasn’t worthy of his attention. Love was for holo-romances and for mothers with their children. He had an arranged marriage with a woman who—who—everything collapsed in his head when he tried to imagine what she felt for him. Her kisses were enthusiastic enough, and he had not imagined the shine in her eyes when she looked at him.

All he had was this protracted feeling of wanting and wanting her, like a drowning man would wish for a desert and the man dying of thirst only dreams of an ocean. That little bubble in his chest when she smiled at him was…

“Fuck,” he said. “I’m fucked.”

Kylo’s low laugh still echoed in his ears after all this time.

Rey is incredulous as he allows the memory to fade. _So we were in bed together after you pursued me for months, we were married for life, we’d just had sex, and you were worried I might find out you were falling in love with me?_

Hux wheezes out a laugh. _That about covers it._

_You were ridiculous. Thank the Force we had Kylo._

He is quickly serious again. _He showed us what love was. I’d forgotten and you didn’t know. He remembered for all of us._

 _You were both wrong,_ she corrects him. _I was loved very dearly, before._ Before has its own meaning for them. Before is the time between Jakku and Snoke, with Master Luke and the Resistance and friends all now lost. They don’t talk about before.

 _Ah. Yes. Before,_ he agrees, then changes the subject. _You were right you know. About the Zygerrians. The treaty fell apart almost as soon as it was made, yet we lost two systems to the slavers. Ryloth is still trying to recover after all these years._

She raises her eyebrows at him. This is a new Hux. _You’re very eager to confess your wrongs,_ she tells him.

He turns his head to meet her gaze. _Isn’t that the thing to do on one’s deathbed?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note this chapter includes a short description of torture, both physical and psychological. It takes place in the scene which begins: _“Master,” she says, and bows her head._ See end notes for an important plot point from the scene in case you wish to skip it.

In the morning she wakes before Hux does. Light streams in from the large windows, cruelly highlighting every age spot and bump of vein on his washed-out skin. His brows are drawn together, and he looks pained. She touches his mind and sees glimpses of a dream, some tedious argument back and forth over a council table.

It’s early still, so she lies quietly beside him and stares at a particular patch of light on the ceiling that seems as familiar as an old friend. The last time she woke up here she had been alone. Hux had taken to waking very early in those days and coming to bed after she was asleep. They had slept side by side, barely touching. Eventually she had returned to her old rooms to sleep and he had never mentioned it.

After a while, he stirs. She feels a strange sense of embarrassment to be lying here beside him, so she moves to get up.

 _Don’t go,_ he says, and there is an edge of something in his mind—panic—or close to it. He grabs at her hand, stiff fingers fumbling to clutch at hers.

He is thinking of the days following their first time together. She and Kylo had not stayed long, going their separate ways without a word. For days afterwards she had hidden herself away using the children as her shield. She had been afraid of her feelings as she alternated between hungry excitement and shamed despair.

Hux had been confused by his intense longing, wanting them both, but not having the words for it. And terrified that he had done something wrong, had not been enough for the two of them. _Useless_ … The word flickers in his mind, a tall figure leans over him and for a moment he is a child again. She pulls him away from the memory and squeezes at his hand. He lets out a long shaky breath.

_Those eyes you saw. It was that traitor stormtrooper, wasn’t it?_

Finn’s name has never passed Hux’s lips. Finn had disappeared when the Resistance fell and was never found, as far as she knew. He could be alive out there still. She tries to picture his warm, dear face all wrinkled and his black curls gone to grey. She hopes he is alive somewhere, or at least that his life had been a happy one after the war ended.

_Yes. He was a good friend for many years. I never found out what happened to him._

Hux’s mind is suddenly blank and closed. He knows something. Dread curls in her belly.

“Tell me,” she says aloud.

His fingers trace a pattern on the back of her hand. _Some things are better left in the past._

A tiny piece of her crumbles away. _He was captured then. Executed._

Hux doesn’t reply and his fingers don’t cease their careful movements.

“Armitage.” In this at least, she would not be a coward. She has to _know._

_He was captured by chance, a raid on a cantina on Lothal. He was working there managing security. They ran his DNA profile because he seemed unusually twitchy._

That fit. Finn had never really learned to play it cool.

Hux blinks a few times. _Kylo … he … he dealt with it. Personally._

Cold spreads across her chest. It’s difficult to take a breath through the layers of ice. “When was this?” she asks, her voice cracking through numb lips.

Hux sighs. _Shortly after the twins were born._

She struggles to free herself from the covers, remembering she has to crawl over him to reach the stool to get off this damn high bed and she is ready to scream at her own stupidity for being there at all, for ever being there in fact.

_Rey. Wait. Rey!_

He grunts as her shin knocks against his. She has hurt him; can already imagine the particular shade his bruise will be.

_Rey. Please listen. He was already afraid then. He wanted to protect you. He was only lashing out in that wild way he had, hoping to strike something vital._

She finally escapes the bedclothes and her feet find the stool. Grabbing at the wooden bedpost, she lowers herself to stand by the bed.

_Rey, please. He was ashamed after. Begged me not to tell you._

She won’t look at him as she hobbles on stiff legs to the door. “Kylo Ren didn’t know the meaning of shame or guilt. He just didn’t want to get caught.”

  


* * *

  


Later, in the shower, it hits her that Hux brought up the subject of Finn, knowing she would express her curiosity as to his fate. Hux wanted her to know what Kylo did. Another of his deathbed confessions it seems. She thinks of Finn lying so still and cold in the snow on Starkiller, of sitting up late laughing and laughing, of final goodbyes as she and Luke confidently board a shuttle to face what must be faced, never guessing at the cost.

Finn would have known she was empress. How would he have felt, looking at her stony face in the holos? She hopes he would have understood that not everyone can find a way to free themselves, that sometimes making the best of things was a kind of freedom too.

She dresses in a comfortable robe and makes her way to the dining room for breakfast. A harsh voice carries down the hallway, Taral’linas is speaking excitedly, and the sound jars against the mechanics in her throat. “Can you do it? Is it really possible?”

Rey cloaks her signature in the Force and lingers in the hallway. She doesn’t dare to try to read any of the minds she can sense in the room: Julion, Orelia and her consort are with Taral’linas. Kylo’s daughter inherited his powerful mind-reading skills. It’s not possible to touch her mind, or any near hers, without her awareness.

“No one else knows. Not the emperor, not Taral, not Mother. No one can know.” This is Julion. He sounds urgent, flustered.

“Please. Keep it a secret for us,” Orelia pleads.

“How does Taral not know? He wouldn’t give you up; he’d be as pleased as I am.”

“He doesn’t pry into people’s private thoughts, unlike some people.” Julion sounds supremely annoyed now.

Taral’linas laughs, a rough grating noise of gears crunching together. “More fool him. I won’t tell. You can trust me to hide it from everyone, including—” She breaks off at the hiss of a door opening from the kitchens. A droid’s tinny voice offers them more caf and tea.

The Force is a cool puff of air in her ear. _Silence_ , it whispers, and it tastes of light and dark mixed, and of yearning. Rey takes this as her cue to enter, breezy and unconcerned by the jerks of shoulders and guilty glances exchanged. The unconcern is almost genuine, even with the warning. She will find out at the right time, or not. If it’s something that will make her broken daughter happy, it can only be a good thing. 

  


* * *

  


After breakfast, Rey declares her intention to visit Darth Vader’s shrine at the temple. The stilted luxury of the palace is pressing in on her, and she needs an excuse to get out. To her surprise, Taral’linas volunteers to accompany her. 

Taral’linas sits across from her in the shuttle, glaring through her mask, and Rey shifts uncomfortably in her seat. _“Why do you hate me so much?”_ she wants to ask, even knowing the answer _._

“You were in the hallway earlier,” Taral’linas says abruptly. “What did you hear?”

Rey smooths her facial expression and tightens the shields around her mind. “Not much,” she says truthfully. “Do I want to know?”

Taral’linas leans back and folds her arms across her chest. “Not yet.”

A tall woman in the black mask of the Order of the Knights of Ren comes down to greet them when they arrive. She is the current master of the knights, but Taral’linas technically outranks her, so she bows low and again, even lower, to Rey.

Taral’linas leaves them, murmuring something about catching up with some acquaintances, and Rey is surprised once more. She would have thought after all this time Taral’linas would be longing to commune at her great-grandfather’s shrine.

Master Ren personally guides Rey down to the catacombs below the former Jedi Temple to the more ancient Sith one that has hunched quietly under it for thousands of years, its darkness slowly polluting the light of the Jedi as they went about their business, unaware of the creeping taint. When Palpatine was emperor, he converted the temple to his palace, partly in reverence to his Sith forbears, partly to spit on the memory of the Jedi. 

A large open room in the lowest level is dedicated to Darth Vader and his sacred mask rests there for all knights to contemplate in their meditations. The room is cool, all hard, echoing stonework. In the beginning it was quite rough hewn, with only carvings in the old Sith language for decoration. Over the years, finely made wooden benches have been set against the walls, the carvings have been refined and the walls and floor highly polished. The shrine is a cold jewel, gleaming with the dark side, faceted with power. Somehow it’s too bright against the eyes, yet too dim to make out the details of any of the dark, kneeling figures around the room. Master Ren bows and begs to be excused—her duties are many—and Rey dismisses her with a distracted wave of her hand.

Rey goes to pay her respects to the twisted, melted mask. Kylo used to keep it in his quarters and meditated in front of it often. He said that his grandfather spoke to him sometimes in visions. From Luke, Rey had learned of Force ghosts, that Anakin Skywalker had become one upon his death. She had met Anakin’s ghost once, briefly, and he looked at her with dismay. _“You’re marked,”_ he said only, and disappeared. His face had been young, but his eyes were ancient. Nothing of Anakin remained in the durasteel shell of the helmet, and she never told Kylo of the encounter.

She had donated the mask to the temple after Kylo died, in a fit of spite. Sometimes she wishes she had it in her own rooms; it would have been a comfort to have a connection with him. Maybe Vader could have been more help to her than Anakin was. He knew how to live with a harsh master, at least, and how to live with a broken heart.

The mask doesn’t call to her today, so she goes to the edge of the room to lower herself to one of the benches. The seat is hard beneath her, but she draws from the discomfort and closes her eyes. Eagerly the dark power flows around her. It’s very thick here, a tingling shape forming in her hands. She feels like she could form it into a ball if she pressed it firmly enough, like snow. 

One of the Resistance bases had been on an ice planet. Groups of them had regularly gone out to play in the snow and have snowball fights. She had been good-naturedly accused of cheating with the Force when some of her throws were a little too good. Finn had been better, though. His snowballs were well-packed little grenades. He was fast at firing them off and rarely missed.

She leans her head back against the chilly stone, the edge of a carved word digging into her skull. The dark side warms her, flows along her skin in a gentle caress, dulling the sharp pain of the memory. It’s all right. She won’t think of a red blade slicing into soft, brown flesh, won’t think of warm eyes going dim—did he feel betrayed? Did he think that Kylo came for him at her order?—won’t think of Kylo embracing her when he returned, looking her in the eye without fear or remorse. 

It feels like something has been cut away from her, too; some piece of light that she was clinging onto without knowing it. She hadn’t thought of Finn in a long time, but it seems he’d always been there, like the light that Maz promised her all those years ago. The light was unreachable now, just as Finn was. _Gone, gone, gone,_ she thinks, ticking names off in her head one by one.

After awhile the pain fades and her mind drifts. The power she holds in her hands swells, but it doesn’t have the crystalline edges of frozen water. It’s an elastic, squishy thing, a kind of stretchable sand, ready to pour into any vessel she cares to fill. 

Its softness is almost revolting, like a rotten fruit she touched once back on Jakku. It had been left on the ground when a trader took down her market stall for the day. The side facing up had been perfect—ripe and fresh—but underneath a furry mold had entered through a weak spot, and her fingers broke through the skin when she picked it up. The warmth inside had been surprising, like she had dug her hand into the heart of a dying animal. But this was Jakku and food was precious, so she ate around the mold. It had tasted fine, but afterwards a disgusting sliminess coated her fingers and tongue, and the taste of decay lingered in her mouth.

A gentle touch brushes against her mind, long ghostly fingers stroke her cheek. Her eyes snap open. 

Master Ren has reappeared and waits patiently in front of Rey to be acknowledged. “Our master calls for you, Empress,” Master Ren says. “He awaits you in the holochamber.”

  


* * *

  


“Master,” she says, and bows her head. 

He appears to be standing right in front of her. Holo-communication quality has vastly improved over the years, particularly when resonators and focusing beams can be implanted in a large room like this. Her master’s dark red robes are vibrant in full colour, and she can easily make out the little glint in his eye and his twisted half-smile that show his happiness at seeing her.

“My dear, I felt you here at the temple.” He nods at her approvingly. “How is the emperor?”

“His body is weak, but his mind is still clear. I’ve been able to speak with him mind to mind.”

Snoke purses his lips. He was always jealous that she would share herself that way with Hux and Kylo, but avoided doing so with him. “Will he recover? I understand a regency has been enacted.” He says it like it was done without his knowledge, which is completely impossible, of course.

“The doctors say it’s only a matter of time before he has another stroke. He’s not expected to improve much.” She offers up small glimpses of Hux in the garden and her general concern for him, but nothing of what they’d shared—or argued over—in the past few days.

“Empire Day is in a few days’ time. It will be beneficial for you to be seen at the celebrations. I expect you to return home afterward. There is nothing more you can do for the emperor.”

She swallows. He is being kind in giving her so long. “Perhaps he might come back home with me?” she blurts out, and her heart races at her daring.

Snoke looks sorrowful. “Certainly a trip in hyperspace will not be helpful for a man in his condition. No, he is better off in the care of the doctors on Coruscant, with his children surrounding him.”

They are her children too, she thinks, then quells the thought immediately in case he sees. She stares at the floor. “May I not stay until the end, Master? I—I ...” she flounders off into silence as his eyes narrow.

“It could be many months yet. You are needed here with me.” 

_He_ needs her with him, he means. She doesn’t actually _do_ anything there. Her life is aimless apart from being a companion to her master. Hot resentment climbs up her throat.

She looks up at him, allows him to see the yellow of her eyes after her time surrounded by the darkness in the shrine. “Please, Master?” 

He always liked it when she begged, loved the time just before she broke along the lines he gave her. He liked less the pieces she shattered into, smaller each time, and the work required to put her back together. That she needed him was everything; that he had to exert himself to help her was a disappointment.

He tilts his head to one side, examining her face with his eyes as his mind crawls over hers. She is used to this. Her mental shields are like shifting sands. Just as he appears to sift through one layer, going deeper into her, a hot wind makes ripples in the sand, collapsing a high dune in slow motion over him and forcing him to start digging again. Kylo taught her well, but still, Snoke sees enough.

His voice is cold. “You will leave the day after Empire Day.” He has no need to make threats. He never has. 

It might have been easier if she had been kept in an actual dungeon. Heavy manacles binding her to a dripping, icy-cold wall, a stinking bucket in the corner, slop delivered in a filthy bowl once a day if she was lucky. Those would have been sensations to cling onto; her situation would have been obvious.

Instead her room at Snoke’s fortress was airy and bright, and her bed was covered in warm blankets. Everything was comfortable, and it would have been a dream after Jakku, after freezing bases and sleeping on the hard dirt floor of the hut on Ahch-To. 

It was a nightmare, though, of twisting agony and scars like lacework that were healed as soon as they burst through her flayed skin. Alone in the darkness—except she was never _alone_ —she was loved and hurt and loved and it was all so much that it was never clear what happened, except that there was a before and an after and in between lay a dark pit that held everything and now it held power too.

She had thought Jakku a prison, but it taught her everything of value she needed. Survival, mainly: how to grasp together the ragged edges of a mind that kept wanting to crack in the confusion of love and pain turning out to be the same thing after all. 

“Yes, Master,” she says obediently.

  


* * *

  


In the shuttle on the way back, Taral’linas again sitting in icy silence across from her—her ability to destroy the atmosphere of a room with her sulking and grudges an unhappy inheritance from her father—Rey glimpses the Imperial prison. Her feelings are mixed at the sight of the imposing building: a tiny flicker of pride, then sorrow and a tight feeling across her scalp and hands.

It had been like a dash of cold water across her when she found out. She learned it from a stray thought in Kylo’s head as she wandered there amongst his thoughts and memories once, after the three of them made love. Almost ten years after the war ended, Leia Organa was _alive_ and living in solitary confinement at that very prison.

“Have you seen her?” she had asked him.

He had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable, but he held her gaze. “I interrogated her personally after she was captured.” Kylo was as obedient as Rey was, she couldn’t fault him for that.

She tried to imagine it, how his mother would have looked at him as he combed through her mind, the words of accusation she might have thrown at him. Or of love perhaps.

Leia’s story was revised by the finest PR minds of the new Empire, all under Hux’s direction. The new narrative went thusly: the daughter of the great Darth Vader was born at the dawn of the last Empire and raised as royalty. As a youthful idealist, Leia joined the Rebel Alliance, under the influence of her adoptive father, who had spent the final years of the Republic sowing chaos and discord in the Senate. The Empire was burdened with a thousand years of corrupt Republican rule, and the Rebellion was merely a misguided response to the time it was taking to put everything into the order the galaxy so badly needed.

With Leia’s aid, the Empire was defeated, proving that it was flawed at its heart. The daughter of Vader continued on to help build a new Republic, but it was clear to her that it, too, was just as decadent as the last. She supported the legislation calling for the instatement of a First Senator with greater decision-making authority and ran for the position herself. When her political career crumbled at the revelation of her ancestry, she once again turned to rebellion against the disorder of the Republic.

The Resistance fought valiantly against Republican decay, but ultimately sided with them in the war against the First Order. When the First Order righteously prevailed, Leia’s moving speech of surrender hailed our beloved Emperor Hux as a noble adversary. The war itself was a tragic affair, the Resistance fundamentally misunderstanding the desires of the First Order for a peaceful and prosperous Empire that would not be mired in corruption or flawed by the arrogance of the Sith. 

Leia Organa was remembered as a great leader and worthy heir to the legacy of the last Empire. When it came out later that she was the mother of Taral Kylo Ren, the emperor’s faithful protector, she was even more venerated.

Sadly, as the news briefings went, she was killed by stray friendly fire as she finished recording her final words: “I wish the galaxy peace. All sides have lost too much, and my only hope is that we can rebuild what has been destroyed and create anew the freedom of all beings. War has torn us apart—it’s time to come back together.”

It was all true, from a certain point of view. Apart from the death, of course, because she was very much alive, “In case she’s of use at some point,” Hux explained.

Rey had asked to go see her, then demanded, then begged. Hux and Kylo stood firm. She was not to see any former Resistance friends.

It was her first and only true act of disobedience. Really, it was ridiculously easy to escape unnoticed from the palace and make her way alone to the prison. It was another simple matter to get inside, to ensure the cameras could not track her, to make her way silently to a small, bare room at the top of the tower.

The years had been very unkind. Leia was as small and thin as a bird, and so hunched over she permanently looked at the floor. This shuffling old woman was nothing like the fierce general Rey had known so well. She didn’t know Rey anymore, didn’t remember anything of the Resistance, of Kylo Ren, of the First Order Empire. Her mind was trapped a few years after the fall of the old Empire, when everything was still possible and Han was her beloved husband. 

She told Rey repeatedly, “I have a son, you know! Little Ben, he has the most beautiful black curls. He’s strong in the Force, Luke says. Perhaps he’ll be a Jedi one day.” Her beaming smile lit up her shrunken face, revealing hints of the beauty she had been. Her dark eyes were still the same, though: Kylo’s eyes.

Rey hugged her when she left. It was like holding something fragile, a tiny figure made of glass. “I love your son, too,” she told her, and Leia grinned. 

“Good,” she said. “He needs lots of love.”

It’s strange now to think that Rey is around the age that Leia was then. Leia had seemed impossibly old; it didn’t even cross Rey’s mind at the time that one day she might be that delicate figure that someone else would be afraid to break.

It was nighttime when she came out of the prison, but the city-world never slept, and the sky was a roar of orange light and endless streams of traffic. She was truly alone and unobserved for the first time in years. The Imperial Palace in the distance was lit up brightly. The search would be on for her already, but there was still time, a tiny window when she might disappear into the orange.

She thought of it, truly considered it. How she could hide, where she could go. She was a survivor. She was a weapon. She knew it was possible. An image formed, a creature in a mask, hunting her in the woods. Kylo wouldn’t rest. Her master wouldn’t rest. She would be found.

In fact, Kylo was already there, waiting for her by a speeder bike. He was dressed in casual clothing and his face was bare. His long hair stirred in the breeze—when was the last time she’d seen him outside without his mask? Something of the look on his face, of the leanness of his body in the unfamiliar clothes, reminded her so strongly of Han that she thought maybe he’d come to take her away somewhere. 

  
_(Art by[SAINTVADER](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/))_

A wild hope stirred inside that this might be true, that he might know somewhere safe where they would never be found. “ _Yes, let’s go,”_ she was ready to say. She could hop right on the back of the speeder and they could fly away and pretend that they were just two people in love out for an evening in the capital. Then they would return to their ship—in her fantasy, it was the _Falcon,_ of course—and she would pilot them up, up and out into the black. Except this black was a haven, laden with all the possibility of stars.

He frowned as he read something of what she was imagining. “Come on,” he said impatiently. “People are worried about you.” 

The dream dissolved into the lines between his brows and beside his mouth. Her hand drifted to her saber at her waist and his eyes widened slightly. He took a half step away from the bike, his own hand going to his belt.

“How was she?” he asked. His eyes were carefully watching her.

She smiled. “She remembers you, Ben.” It was the only time she ever said the name to him. In the years she’d known Leia, they had talked of him often, and Leia had always used his old name. But it had never fit, it wasn’t the man Rey knew.

His nostrils flared. “What’s going on, Rey?”

Everything felt balanced on a knife edge and she felt crazy enough to dance on it. She ignited her saber, the red blade extending down by her side to light up the night.

He inhaled and called his own saber to his hand. Then he was in her mind. _Don’t do this, Rey. I don’t want to hurt you._ His mind-voice was confused and hurt.

“What makes you think you can?” she asked and lifted her weapon.

He considered a moment. Their last fight had been in the snowy forest of Starkiller Base. Untrained, she had beaten him. They both sparred daily with the knights, but by unspoken agreement, never with each other. Both of them had increased in skill and power over the years. He was no longer conflicted, was uninjured. But she was ten years younger and might be stronger. He had his pride, though. He flicked his saber on.

They had only just begun testing each other, slowly circling, their blades crashing together as she made a series of quick attacks, when it was all over. Several transports landed around them, and Hux himself was standing there, looking more than a little frazzled, taking in the two of them with their weapons still raised at each other.

“What an interesting locale for a sparring session,” he said, projecting his voice out so the knights and guards surrounding them could all hear. “No doubt the thought of the glowing lights at night appealed to your sense of drama, Taral Ren.”

His voice was teasing, chiding. Behind that, in the confines of his mind, he was in a state of confused terror. 

“Indeed,” Kylo called, and turned his weapon off.

Rey followed suit, but she took a quick glance behind her where there were no guards, and thought of running. Would they shoot her? Could she get away?

Kylo was at her side in two long strides, his arm clamping around her waist. “Apologies for any alarm,” he said. “The empress and I were trying to settle a bet.”

She was hustled into the transport to stand swaying with her back to his broad chest for the short trip back to the palace. He kept one strong arm wrapped tight around her the whole way; a breach of protocol to hold her like that where others could see, but perhaps forgivable under the circumstances. 

Snoke had to be informed, of course, and she received a rare summons to his physical presence to account for her actions. Two months with him was her punishment, until she remembered again what love hurt like and there was a new network of scars on her treacherous hands, that dared to raise a weapon in the presence of the emperor.

When she returned to the palace, her eyes were gold again and she slept alone for some time. It was Hux who reached out, who was there one day in the garden with Kylo at his side. “Come back to us,” he said. “We miss you.”

  


* * *

  


As the shuttle touches down, Rey starts to push herself slowly to her feet, but Taral’linas unexpectedly takes her arm. 

They walk like that, arm in arm, back into the palace, down long corridors and up lifts to Rey’s room. Taral’linas drops her arm when they get to Rey’s door. Then, even more unexpectedly, she takes her helmet off. Up close, those eyes are unnerving, the red lights in the centre slowly shrinking as she focuses on Rey’s face.

“You were brave once,” Taral’linas says in her abrupt way.

Rey raises her eyebrows in question.

“You were projecting.”

Ah. It’s getting to be a bad habit, losing control of her memories like that, forcing them on those around her. She will have to be careful around Snoke when she returns home. Who knows what’s she’s already revealed to him, all unknowing.

Shrugging, she looks down and away from the strange eyes. “It wasn’t worth it.” She runs a finger across the back of one hand. Even now she can feel the little cracks in her skin. Two months and several weeks of time lost with Kylo. What might have been different if she had never gone out that night, if he had been able to trust her fully?

“I didn’t think you had it in you. I thought you were no more than his lapdog, eager to expose your belly to your master so he could rub it and tell you you’re his good girl.”

Rey looks up sharply. The half-smile on Taral'linas's face reminds Rey of Kylo and the way he used insults sometimes to show his love.

“I thought I was brave with all my little defiances,” Taral’linas continues, lifting one shoulder to shift the double-bladed lightsaber on her back. “But I was never that close.”

Close to what, she doesn’t say. Escape? Courage? 

“I’m sorry,” Rey says. Improbably, impossibly, it might be the first time she has said those words to Taral’linas. She dares to look deep into the red light, tries to see her child inside. “I would have gone with him if he’d just told me.”

“You could have gone alone, too.”

Rey clenches her fists unconsciously, feels the stiffness in her finger-bones. “I wanted to. I tried to. I went to him, after. Begged him. Threatened him.” She’s never told anyone this, not even Hux. “He let me try. I ...” She shakes her head. 

He had been amused—surely not shaken—enough to bargain, despite her pitiful attempts to raise a hand against him. It was a bitter victory of sorts, the years they traded. Bile rises in her throat. “You were right to call me a lapdog.”

 _Long thin arms encircled her, a rough robe rubbed against her cheek, fingers in her hair. “Shhh,” he’d said, and she had allowed him to comfort her._

Shameful.

She swallows. “Then you were gone and so was Kyl—your father, I mean. I failed.” It feels good to say it, to acknowledge it at last.

Taral’linas nods, not unkindly. “Yes, you did.”

A sob comes from somewhere deep inside and bursts out from Rey’s throat. It’s a rough, ugly sound, like she’s crying through the vocoder in Taral’linas’s mask.

“I’m sorry,” Rey manages. “I’m sorry.”

“You think I don’t know how it is?” Taral’linas asks gently.

Rey shakes her head, but she can’t speak.

“You were thinking earlier that I hate you. You’re wrong. There’s only one person I hate, and only one person I love.”

With that, she replaces her helmet and strides off, leaving Rey to go into her rooms alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Rey speaks to Snoke he insists that she returns home to him after Empire Day, which is only a few days away.
> 
> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	5. Chapter 5

In her room sits an armchair that she often used to sit on and hold her children while she read to them. The arms are worn on the sides from little feet rubbing back and forth on them in excitement as she read the silly stories of brave young Imperials having sanctioned adventures while their kindly non-human servants cleaned up the messes they left behind.

She slumps in the chair now and cries until she is tired of the sound of her sobs, and her head throbs mercilessly. She hasn’t cried in years, thought her tears were all used up. 

A knock sounds at the door, then a droid enters. It’s programmed to respond to human emotions, so it regards her tear-stained face and rumpled hair with something approaching mechanical dismay. It recovers itself enough to issue an invitation from the emperor to sit with him this evening after dinner. The stilted formality of it is wearingly familiar. Even when Hux was fit and well, their final years were like this. 

Kylo would have burst into her rooms without knocking and swept her up in his arms to carry her off for an afternoon of ravishing, _before_ the evening of sitting together and talking quietly.

She waves a hand at the droid. “Yes, yes,” she says. “Tell him I’ll come.”

Only a minute or two after she has fixed up her face and hair another knock sounds. This time it’s Mari. For once she’s out of her scruffy artist’s clothes and dressed up in fine shimmersilk robes of blue-green to match her eyes.

“I’ve come to collect you for dinner, Mama,” she says cheerfully, not seeming to notice Rey’s swollen eyes and red nose. Even in the elegant robes, there is something earthy and genuine about her that belies her years of palace training.

Her undemanding presence is a balm to Rey’s fractured heart. “Come sit with me a minute. Tell me of your latest project. And your latest lover.” Rey tries to summon a smile. 

She and Mari speak often; Mari is one of the few to regularly visit Rey and Snoke. He is delighted with her, and treats her like a kindly uncle. For her part, she is polite, but wary. She had been there when the twins returned from their training, all brittle and full of rage. No doubt she thanked the Force daily for her own blindness to it, and for her role as the baby of the family who had no expectations to fill.

Mari settles into the matching armchair beside Rey. Though there are two the same, Rey always sat in only one.

“The wrecks are amazing on Taris, the most varied that I’ve seen. I’ve joined a sort of collective. Artists, singers, dancers, even a couple swoop racers. We all live in one big building that was adapted from an old troop transport. It’s perfect, Mama, the organic combined with the military—just what I’ve been trying to achieve in my sculpture all this time.” Mari’s face is lit up with enthusiasm.

“I’m pleased for you,” Rey says. Her chest is heavy and dull, but she tries to feel something for Mari’s happiness.

“The best part is, I’m the only human there. We’re all equals and everyone sleeps with whomever they want, whenever they want. Free love, Mama.” Mari’s eyes twinkle. “I know you would understand.”

Rey has to laugh. “Don’t tell your father. You know how he is about xeno stuff. It makes him twitchy.”

Mari sighs. “His xenophobia is so old fashioned. He could barely bring himself to look at Kaliyo when we visited, and a Rattataki is as near to a human as a near-human can get.”

“She was a lovely girl, what happened to her?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Mari shrugs dismissively. “I think she lives on Zakuul now. I always suspected she was some sort of spy that Father set on me.”

He wouldn’t do that, Rey almost starts to say, then realizes that yes, he would. 

“I spent the afternoon with him,” Mari says after a pause. “I wish I could talk with him like you can. We went out to sit in the gardens.”

Hux had been out to the garden more times in the last few days than the last few years put together, Rey is certain. He always preferred to be inside, in his office, where he could oversee everything. Nature made him uneasy, and idling his time away surrounded by it made him impatient. After they were lovers, he rarely sought her out in the gardens, though she continued her daily walks there. He felt that they saw each other enough, in the evenings and nights. He was a busy man.

Rey murmurs something like: How nice.

“It’s awful, seeing him like this. He was always so strong.” Mari picks at the material of the chair’s armrest. “What will happen after he dies?”

Rey’s throat seizes up for a moment and her sore eyes fill again with tears. “I don’t know,” she says with difficulty. “I suppose there will be a funeral, then Orelia’s coronation.” Would Snoke allow her to attend either? She will beg him, remind him of her duty to the Empire if all else fails.

Mari turns to look at her. “No, Mama. I mean, what will you do? Will you stay here awhile with us?”

Rey can’t meet Mari’s eyes. “Snoke has asked me to come home after Empire Day.”

“Empire Day. But that’s only a few days from now! Surely you don’t think Father will be gone by then? So soon?” Mari’s face is stricken.

“I hope not. But I can’t stay here any longer. Snoke—” Rey breaks off helplessly. Mari never understood fully, never knew _why_ Rey had to obey.

“But surely, if you asked him, he would let you stay until the end? I was going to ask you to come to Taris with me for a few days after the funeral. I’m dying to show you my latest sculpture. It’s a ship that ended up partially submerged in the water and now the kelp is growing up all around it…”

“It sounds wonderful. But I must go home. He—he was kind to let me come in the first place and to stay for so many days. I would love to see your home and your sculpture, and meet your friends. But not now, when I’ve just been away. It’s not possible.”

Mari stands up, agitated. “You never even asked to stay! Or all those times I invited you to visit, you never even asked him, did you?”

“I did ask, how can you think I didn’t?” Rey lies. Asking to stay with Hux today was true enough, but there had been no point in asking her master about any of the visits. He was generous enough to allow Mari to see her; there was no question that Rey would be allowed to go off to any of the uncivilized worlds Mari frequented.

“Why won’t you fight for anything, Mama?” 

Rey stands and goes to the window, looking blindly out at the lengthening shadows of the early evening. No one understood. She _had_ fought. It wasn’t enough.

“Are you afraid he will punish you? Hurt you for defying him?”

“He doesn’t hurt _me_ anymore,” Rey says. 

“Oh, Mama.” Mari comes to stand at the window by Rey and wraps one arm around her waist. Her head leans against Rey’s shoulder. “I wish I could take you away from all this, just for a day or two.”

Rey’s throat is choked again. She has to resist the urge to shove Mari away from her. The arm at her waist and the head on her shoulder are leaden weights. It doesn’t feel like comfort, only a kind of pity that demands something in return. It’s a leeching feeling, like something is being taken away from her instead of being given. 

She awkwardly pats Mari’s back. “You must come and stay with us for awhile in a few months. You can show me holos of how the kelp has grown.”

Mari winces at the “us” and pulls away. “Sure,” she says, and her tone rivals Taral’linas’s for bitterness.

  


* * *

  


Julion’s wife joins them for the first time at dinner after returning from a visit to her homeworld. She is a delicate, sweet woman from the Sindian family of Arkanis, long-time supporters of the First Order. Rey is aware Julion prefers men, and all his children with his wife are from artificial implantation, but the two of them seem to get along well enough. 

Julion has his favourite knight, who has guarded him since he took up his responsibilities as a young man. Lady Sindian indulges her children—none of them Force-sensitive, thank the stars—and works tirelessly for innumerable charities. The Empire is anxious to be seen to care for its people. Much history needs to be erased with good works.

“How go the preparations for Empire Day, Your Highness?” Lady Sindian asks Orelia now.

Orelia and Julion exchange a brief, uneasy glance, Rey notes. Then Taral’linas catches her eye and tilts her head with a half smile. The way her mouth lifts at the corner reminds Rey so much of Kylo that for a moment she forgets to be interested in anything else going on, lost in memories of that wry smile.

“... was Father’s dream and life’s work,” Orelia is saying. “I’ve asked him if wants to attend, but he told Taral no. He said he’ll watch the feed in his room.” Her tone is sad, but there is a suppressed energy in her eyes. The Force vibrates around her, excited by something.

“Will you come, Mother?” Julion asks.

His pale eyes are hard on her face. He wants something, he has always _wanted_ something. His has been a life of frustration at every turn, though she knows that his opinions and ideas are respected by both Hux and Orelia. But living off respect is poor fare for a hungry man.

“Yes,” she says, just to please him. 

His face breaks into a relieved smile. “Good,” he says. “Good.” His hand shakes slightly as he lifts his fork to his mouth.

“It’s so nice to sit here with everyone, as a whole family,” Lady Sindian says pleasantly. “Of course we’re incomplete without the emperor! But it’s so lovely to have you with us again, Empress. I hope you’ll stay for some time.”

Rey attempts to smile back at this kindness. Her lips are stiff, and it’s hard to force the words out. “I regret that won’t be possible. I spoke with my master earlier today, and he requested that I return home after Empire Day.”

Lady Sindian blinks. “But—” She has been a part of the family long enough to know better than to voice any concern over Snoke’s “requests.” She blinks again, rapidly. “I see,” she says.

The rest of the table is silent. 

Orelia looks down at her plate, then up. Her face is calm now. “We must make the most of your time with us, then, Mother.”

  


* * *

  


Hux is sitting in his hoverchair when she slips in through the door. She is wearing her nightgown with a long-sleeved robe. He looks up from the datapad he is holding, and his face twists itself into a relieved half-smile.

 _I wasn’t sure if you would come,_ he projects. His eyes widen slightly as he takes in her nightclothes, and a feeling of warmth and love fills her mind from him.

It’s enough to start her tears again. 

His expression turns concerned. _What’s wrong?_

She seats herself on the chair next to him before replying. _I spoke to Snoke today. He ordered me home the day after Empire Day._

His hurt and feeling of abandonment are like a slap in the face. _What would happen if you didn’t go? No one here would force you._

She shifts in the chair. _It’s not an option._

In truth, she despises herself for her weakness. She _wants_ to go back to her master, to the comfort of being with him, where she belongs. It’s easy there to forget everything. When they sit together in silence, their power mingling as they wander the shadows together—that’s when she is free.

Hux was never one to accept oblique answers. Kylo used to drive him mad with his opaque philosophizing about the Force. Kylo only had to say, _“The Force wills it,”_ to set Hux off. Hux likes things that can be put into simple terms, preferably with clear instructions for building or understanding it.

So now he says, _Tell me. What would happen?_

She gives him a peek—the cold cells in the stout little building behind the main keep of Snoke’s fortress. The men and women waiting for their turn to suffer. The Empire has many enemies, many suitable subjects for training exercises, for _lessons_ , when required.

Hux swallows with difficulty. _You were in those cells before?_

_Oh no. My cell was different entirely._

He doesn’t push further. _Let’s not argue again then. There’s too little time left. Agreed?_

She eyes him. _Why did you want me to know what Kylo did to Finn?_

_You romanticize him too much. It’s why you’ve never been able to let him go._

She laughs derisively. _And you have?_

He looks her in the eye. _Yes, Rey. As your daughter said, it’s been almost forty years._

 _Thirty-seven,_ she corrects him automatically.

 _Almost forty,_ he says again, firmly. _When he died I lost you as well. You stayed here almost twenty years after that day, but you were gone. That’s what I haven’t been able to let go. I’m in love with ghosts—one living and one dead._

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so instead she tells him, _I’ve met ghosts. Old Jedi long dead. They used to speak often with Master Luke._

This sharpens Hux’s interest. She has rarely spoken of her first master. Kylo disliked hearing of him, and her time as a Jedi belonged to before. _Were they full of wisdom from the Force?_

She smiles. _Yes, I suppose they were. They still exist as ghosts in the Force even now, I would think. But they can’t appear in the presence of the dark side, and there’s no one left in the light to speak with them._

She imagines them all together: Qui-Gon, Yoda, Obi-Wan, even Anakin. Perhaps they sit together and mourn the current state of the Force, the death of the light and the spreading of darkness. She wonders for the first time if Luke managed it, to keep the shards of himself together enough in the Force to be able to reassemble them into something new. It would be good to be able to see him again.

If only there were some sort of switch inside her. Flick it and a light would come on, flooding through her into every little corner, so dazzling her scars would disappear. The pit at her centre would be revealed as nothing more than a plain old hole, filled with horror and twisted longing, yes, but those agonies would be burned away in the blaze of it. It would burn and burn as she lit up, light spilling out from her nose and mouth as the dark screamed out of her. She would be a pure thing, cleansed of the taint of Snoke, of Jakku, of Kylo’s death, of her children’s pain. 

_At least I’m not in that list,_ Hux says softly. 

She’s been projecting again. _I’m sorry,_ she says. _You weren’t meant to see that._

Hux is wrong though. He might not be in the list of things she wishes to be cleansed of, but he is tainted too. They all are.

He looks down at the datapad still held in his hand, and her eyes follow his. On the screen there is an image, a ship half covered in what appears to be kelp. This must be Mari’s project. 

_May I see?_ she asks.

He hands the pad to her and she flips through a gallery of images. It is rather pleasing the way the kelp has twined around the outer parts of the ship, but it hardly seems like a piece of art, more an accident.

 _She told me all about it this afternoon. She’s living in some ridiculous commune with a highly suspect group of xenos,_ he grumbles.

Rey laughs at him. _Those xenos are part of your Empire too, Armitage._

_Hmph. I suppose._

For all his personal prejudices, Hux had ensured that non-humans in the Empire were treated as equal to humans. It was one of Palpatine’s worst mistakes, to class non-humans as second-class citizens. The ensuing cycle of oppression and uprisings had greatly contributed to the formation of the Rebellion.

It was getting late, and she could feel Hux tiring. _Shall I activate the med-droids to help you get ready for bed?_

He nods, still grumpy. _I feel like an old man._

She smiles at him and takes his hand, dipping her head to drop a kiss on the back of it. _You’re my old man._

He quickly stifles the little bubble of joy that bursts in his chest at her actions. She was never one for affectionate touches or words.

 _Still hiding your feelings after all these years?_ she teases him.

He lets out a dry laugh. _Reflex._

She goes into his office to give him privacy while the droids come out to prepare him for sleep. The room is tidy as always, but the chair is a little askew from the desk, giving the impression that Hux just stepped away from it for a minute, and would be right back. A small holo imager sits on the desk, and she picks it up. 

It displays a family holo, taken a few weeks after Mari’s birth by the official court holographer. She and Hux sit on ornate chairs—Hux always insisted they weren’t thrones, but they clearly are—grandly arrayed in Imperial white. Orelia, bright eyed and smiling at seven, with a missing front tooth, stands at Hux’s knee. Julion, a chubby five-year-old with a shock of ginger hair, looks up uncertainly from beside Rey. He hadn’t wanted to be in the picture at all and had to be bribed with something—she can’t remember what—to hold still for even the few minutes required to get a good shot.

Rey is holding her new baby—she remembers being terrified Mari would make a mess across her white robes—and is surprised now at the fierce delight on her younger face. They had been happy then.

She presses the button on the base of the holo unit, and it switches to another image. This one was more relaxed, taken quickly out in the garden, with Kylo and the three-year-old twins joining the group. Kylo is sitting between her and Hux, their heads leaning in towards his. The three of them are smiling, a rare event. Kylo balances the twins in his lap, while Hux holds his two children on his and she again holds Mari.

She has seen the picture before of course, but not for many years. Her datapad holds all the old images, and she thinks of looking at them often, but it always seems like too much. It is too much, too much to believe that within three years of that day in the garden, Kylo would be dead. A few more, and their children would be with their new master.

Meaning to put the unit back down, she presses the button to return it to the original image, but a third one comes up. This one is of her, an official portrait taken a few months after Orelia was born. Rey's face still holds a little of the roundness she gained in pregnancy, but it's flattering, filling out her cheeks and softening the sharpness of her jaw. 

She wears Imperial white and at her throat is the kyber crystal necklace Hux gave her. It glows red against her skin, and the precisely cut shapes of it remind her of teeth. Even so, she was beautiful. It’s easy to see that now, from the distance of time. Something she noticed as she aged, young people, all young people, are beautiful. The shine of youth is beauty itself, and it dims and fades a little every year.

She presses the button again and is rewarded with another image. This time, of she, Hux and Kylo. She and Hux sit on those ridiculous thrones again in their Imperial regalia, while Kylo stands between and behind them. He wears his mask and richly embroidered black robes. The hilt of his lightsaber gleams at his side—the one he made after she destroyed his first.

The image was used in propaganda. Hux's face is cold and forbidding, and hers is closed and pale. Kylo looms threateningly despite being in the background. Don’t fuck with the Empire,it warns. 

One of the med-droids comes into the office, and Rey hastily puts down the holo unit. “Master Snoke is waiting to speak with you,” it says.

  


* * *

  


Rey stops briefly at her room to put on a long-sleeved floor length black cloak and some boots. Snoke will have been informed that she was in Hux’s rooms, no need for him to know that she was in her night clothes.

The projection room is a twin to the one in the temple, and Snoke’s image is once again vivid and clear. She bows her head and clasps her hands in front of her, waiting.

“My dearest one,” he begins, and she immediately knows how this will go. “It strikes me that I was a little harsh with you earlier. I can understand how you would wish to be surrounded by your family at this difficult time.”

She glances up. He’s smiling hesitantly, his expression furtive and guilty. This old game. She is supposed to reassure him that she loves him—and no, he wasn’t harsh at all!—and she can’t wait to be back home with him where everything can be as it was with all this tedious unpleasantness forgotten.

She is tired of the game.

“Yes,” she says, not specifying which statement she agrees with, thereby agreeing with both.

He blinks slowly. She isn’t following his script. “Perhaps you may return for the funeral, as long as it’s not too soon. I do hope our beloved emperor continues on for some time yet.”

Ah. He hopes to manipulate her into begging for this reassurance so he can benevolently tell her that yes—maybe—well, _perhaps_ she can come for the funeral. 

“We can discuss that when the times comes, I’m sure,” she says coolly. Just as he loves it when she begs, she takes a dark pleasure in his attempts to wriggle back into her good graces, desperate for her smile and empty love. They each play their own game, score points where they can, and then, he wins. Sometime she gains a little, but always, he wins.

He pauses to consider his next gambit. “I understand you were with the emperor when I called for you.”

His gaze rakes up and down her black cloak and it feels like he can see right through it to her thin nightdress underneath. His jealousy is palpable.

“Yes,” she replies calmly. “Of course I’m spending as much time with him as possible while I can.”

“You were not so anxious to spend time with him before now,” Snoke quite fairly points out. Score one for him.

“I wasn’t aware I was allowed to.” Rey narrows her eyes. A point for her.

“The holonet has never been off limits to you, my dear,” he says. 

“Some things are better said in person.” She and Snoke are even now. Who will break first?

His eyes soften. “Yes.” He reaches out a hand towards her so that it exits the range of the holocamera on his side and disappears from the projection. His wrist is blurred at the edges and she imagines the blur slowly taking him over from the wrist up until he fades away entirely. Something like grief fills her at the thought.

“It’s been so long since you’ve left me for more than few days. I find myself quite lonely.” No doubt he meant the words to come out with a wry, self-deprecating humour, but instead he sounds lost. 

His words hang in the air, waiting for her response. She considers. If she gives him the sympathy and love he wants now, he can most likely be convinced to let her return for the funeral. But if she is hard with him, he may give her more. It’s worth the risk.

“It _has_ only been a few days,” she says.

He looks a little startled. “Surely more.” 

His hand is back at his side, whole again. She stares at his long fingers, thinks of all the things they have done. His darkness crawls over her. It prickles uncomfortably, like velvet rubbed against the grain, and she longs to smooth herself down, to lick her fur back the right way.

“I miss you, Rey,” he says. 

That brings her eyes back to his. It’s rare that he says her name. She is always some endearment belonging to him. My dear, my dearest— _beloved_ , when she allows him to stroke her hair. He has cracked. It’s time to bargain now, and then he will get his reward.

“Let me stay longer. Until Hux dies.” 

“Impossible.”

“A month then. And I return for the funeral.”

“Three weeks, including the time you already spent there. You may return for the funeral.”

She bows her head in acknowledgement, then meets his eyes. “Thank you, Master.” She smiles at him warmly and his shoulders hitch as he catches his breath. He wants so much, and yet so little. “I miss you too,” she confesses. 

And it’s true.

  


* * *

  


As she exits the holochamber, she reaches out for Hux’s mind and finds him fast asleep. She imagines clambering over him again into that silly bed and it’s too much after this endless day. Instead, she goes back to her own room and crawls into her own bed—a much more sensible distance from the floor—and lies awake thinking of the time she has gained.

It’s all false coin anyway, this illusion of gaining time. Hux could die in his sleep tonight, though the Force assures her that won’t happen. She never had a talent for foretelling or visions. A course of action can feel wrong, or right, or simply unsure, but she has never been able to lift the veil and see what lies beyond.

“Will I be with him when he dies?” she whispers into the silent room. She strains her eyes, as if a picture from the future floats there in the darkness, if only she can peer hard enough to see it. 

Nothing.

What is the use of this magic, she wonders. Why was the Force made manifest in _her_? What was its purpose? 

Over the years she has nursed a private fantasy, kept locked far away from Snoke. She dreams that she and Luke triumphed that day, that Kylo (who hadn’t been there) joined his power with theirs and afterwards they turned to each other with somber faces but tremulous smiles of relief. Then Kylo came home and somehow turned into someone else who looked like him, who smelled and tasted like him, and had all his biting humour and passion, but was _Ben._

They still fall in love, of course, and Leia and Luke couldn’t be happier or prouder of Rey and Ben. After a few years they are blessed with twins, strong in the Force, but so full of happiness and light. Ben is the one who teaches them their first meditation exercises and how to swing a training saber, while Rey teaches them about love and forgiveness. 

It’s a beautiful dream, but sad too, because there is no place for Armitage in it. Only Rey and Ben, Ben and Rey, Benrey, Reyben… The words slur together until they lose their meaning as her weary mind slips towards sleep. 

She feels herself drifting, then suddenly she is falling backward, down some stairs or into some dark pit, and she wakes with a gasp. Her heart is pounding, and she fumbles for her lightsaber beside the bed, then remembers she doesn’t have it anymore. Something moves at the edge of her vision. It almost looks like letters, and she struggles to make sense of the lines and curves that disappear whenever she focuses her eyes.

It takes a minute for her heart rate to slow, but she takes deep, long breaths and drags the Force around herself like a cloak. Some unwitting light comes with the darkness that she so indiscriminately gathered, and it flickers against her skin like a trapped insect at a window. A crack in the curtains reveals a small patch of light on the wall. It wavers and then seems to brighten as she looks at it. Her eyes unfocus as she stares, and she pleads for the light to stay with her, just for a little while.

She is a foreign land to it, and it’s wary of exploring her shadows. The letters dance at the edge of her vision again, too dim and blurred to read. Gently she coaxes the light to her eyes. “I need you here,” she whispers to it. “Help me see.”

It’s happy enough to shine in front of her, but the glare is too much. She has looked at the world through a black veil these many years—the one she can’t seem to push to the side to see behind—and the light burns her sensitive eyes. 

Master Luke gave her a meditation exercise once. He handed her a simple candle and told her to stand between the candle and the flame. _“You must know the darkness to be able to truly see the light. Only when you put yourself between them will you understand the choice.”_

 _“Did you give Ben this exercise?”_ she had asked him.

He nodded sadly. _“A true choice means all doors are open.”_

She had been afraid then to risk the temptations of the dark side. He had warned her often enough about the easy but crooked path, the seduction of passion. _Easy._ Snoke told her at the beginning that the Jedi knew nothing of the dark side, and she thinks that he might be right.

Still. 

“I stand between the candle and the flame,” she says out loud. The light is intrigued by this idea, and it swirls in front of her eyes, giving her a headache. “Peace, serenity, harmony,” she chants, giving the light its talismans. She pauses, then thinks of Hux wrapped up in his bed, hair haloed around his sleeping face. “Compassion,” she says.

Something changes. The light flows towards her and seems to soak into her eyes. She can see the room now, lit up as if it were day. She blinks, and the light doesn’t waver. Finally she can make out the letters floating in the air, just down and to the left of her sightline. They are golden in the soft glow of the room. She reads one letter at a time—they seem to be ordered strangely, or they keep moving—until she can piece together the sentence. It’s the question she asked earlier: “ _Will I be with him when he dies?_ ”

This time, the answer comes as soon as her understanding. _There is no death, only the Force._

As frustrating a non-answer as the Force will ever give. The light side fades out to gray, then the room is dim once more and the familiar, comforting warmth of the dark side surrounds her again. It’s jealous that she dallied with its sibling, both loved and hated in equal measure. 

_I’m yours,_ she assures it, and there is a slow pulse of joy through her veins. 

It rewards her loyalty. _You will be there at the end,_ it whispers to her. 

In the morning, her eyes are a sky blue, and it lasts all day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	6. Chapter 6

A soft knock sounds at the door the next morning as she is examining her eyes in the mirror. They are the exact shade that Luke’s used to be. She has never heard of the light side changing eye colour. The change is as jarring as when her eyes glow gold with the dark.

Orelia, Verina and Lady Sindian wait outside for her with their guards. Lady Sindian gasps. “Your eyes, Empress.”

Rey’s hand lifts as if to cover them, then self-consciously turns the action into a light touch at her browbone. “Playing with the wrong kind of power,” she says, and smiles crookedly. She’s not certain what Snoke would say if he saw, but she hopes that the strange colour will disappear with time.

“We’re on our way to a charity brunch, Mother,” Orelia says. “I thought you might like to join us. Kaydel Ko Mitaka will be there. She asks after you often.”

Normally Rey hates social events. Too many people looking at her. The chaos of their thoughts and Force signatures concentrated in one room can be overwhelming. Then she remembers what Hux told her about Finn, and she feels a sort of duty to report it to her former comrade in the Resistance.

“All right,” Rey agrees, to Orelia’s obvious surprise.

As they walk to the transport pad, she thinks of the first time she saw Kaydel after Rey became Empress. She was heavily pregnant with Julion at the time, but there had been some important event that she must attend, so she put on a long gown to cover her comfortable shoes and stood beside Hux as her ankles swelled and her bladder continually protested at the weight bearing down on it.

Finally she could stand it no longer and whispered in Hux’s ear that she needed the refresher. She can still perfectly imagine his delicate shiver as her lips touched his skin—this was before they were lovers, during his careful courting—as he nodded and sent her on her way with a female knight in attendance.

She was washing her hands and checking her hair in the mirror when through the locked door she heard someone arguing with her guard. “ _Please,”_ she made out. Curious, she opened the door, and a woman shoved past her to fall on her knees at the toilet, noisily retching and heaving into it.

The knight motioned for Rey to come away, but Rey ignored her, turning to awkwardly lean over the poor woman, who was panting and swallowing convulsively.

“This woman is ill,” Rey said to the knight. “Go find her a doctor.”

The knight didn’t move. “I can’t leave you, Your Highness.”

From the corner of her eye, Rey saw the woman flinch at her title. 

“I’m fine,” the woman croaked and she staggered to her feet, then attempted a bow. As she straightened, Rey got her first good look at the woman’s face.

“Kaydel?” she said in disbelief. “Kaydel Ko Connix?”

“The woman is fine, Your Highness, we must return to the emperor,” the knight interjected.

Rey waved an impatient hand. “He can wait a minute, I’m sure.” 

She stared at the other woman. It _was_ Kaydel, one of the command controllers in the Resistance. She had an open face, not pretty exactly, but pleasant to look at. Her golden blonde hair was caught up in an elaborate braid around her head. She was dressed in rich robes and fine jewelry, every inch a lady of the court.

“It is you, Kaydel, isn’t it?” Rey asked, uncertain now due to the woman’s silence.

The woman bowed her head. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Rey let out a sort of gasp of laughter. “It’s me, Rey,” she said. “You can’t call me Your Highness after that one night when Poe got us all doing dares and drinking far too much of that Corellian whiskey he ‘found’ somewhere.”

Kaydel laughed nervously. “It’s not appropriate anymore, Your Highness. Those times are long gone.”

“But how is that you’re here?”

“I—I was taken prisoner near the end. I was due to be executed after…” Kaydel faltered. 

Rey understood. If this was before the end of the war, Kaydel would have been tortured for what she knew. She felt a rush of kinship with the other woman. “It’s all right,” she said. 

Kaydel cleared her throat. “Anyway, there was—is—a captain in the First Order—Mitaka—we grew up together before he went off to the academy. He found out I was being held and he pulled some strings, arranged for my release.” Her cheeks went red and waves of a kind of shamed happiness roll off her in the Force. “We’re married now. I’m pregnant—hence the—” she gestured at the toilet.

Rey nodded in understanding and stroked over her own swollen belly. “You’re happy with your captain?” 

Kaydel’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Rey smiled. “Good.” She leaned in close. “I know shame, too,” she whispered.

Kylo had come seeking her then and had marched her off back to Hux. Over the years she often saw Kaydel, but they never spoke privately again. Rey thought that Kaydel was avoiding her because she was too ashamed, or angry at Rey for her defection, but later she learned that Hux had given orders that they were not to have contact. 

That had been one of their most spectacular arguments. Hux didn’t want anything to remind her of the past, which was almost a kindness, but it felt sometimes like she didn’t exist before the day she and Master Luke faced Snoke and lost. Then again, perhaps she didn’t.

Orelia helps her into the shuttle now and sits down beside her. Lady Sindian and Verina sit in the seat behind, quietly chatting. It was Hux’s idea to have his heir make friends with all the husbands and wives of the men and women in power. She was a familiar face at charity events and social gatherings. It made her power base wider and more diverse. And she knew _everything_ about everyone.

Rey tells Orelia briefly of her conversation with Snoke the night before, and that she will be staying longer. Orelia nods, pleased. Her smile is bright, and there is a little ripple in the Force from her to Rey, carrying her genuine pleasure at the news.

They sit in silence awhile, then Orelia leans closer. “The Palpatine family have sent a formal offer of marriage between Cosinga and Verina,” she tells Rey in a low voice.

“Verina favours the young Lord Palpatine?” Rey asks.

“Taral’linas tells me he has been a constant presence at the Hapan Court over the last year or two. She believes the two of them have become lovers.”

Rey sighs. “It’s not an advantageous match. Does she love him?”

“She feigns disinterest in him. I believe she has accepted that she won’t marry him.”

“Who else is on the table?”

Orelia names a few from the more prominent Elder Houses, any of them far more suitable alliances than the Republic-favouring Palpatine family, with their history of Force-sensitivity. “Another curious one came in soon after the regency was announced. House Vandron.”

Rey wrinkles her nose. “Those slavers?”

“Theala Vandron died a few years ago, and the new head of the house is moving to end the slave trade on Asmeru and Karfeddion. Lord Vandron offers a son in his thirties—never involved in the trade—as well as a mutual defense treaty and a small fleet of their latest Dreadnaughts. Their military power is extensive. The Hutts are stirring again despite our negotiations, sponsoring rebellion in half a dozen systems.”

“No harm in allowing her to meet some of these suitors, is there? Some of the others also command sizeable fleets in strategic areas.” Rey glances out the window. “I would like her to be content with your choice.”

“She’s a good girl, like I was.” Orelia pauses. “It’s good to speak with you about these things, Mother. Father never understood, really, how important this choice is.”

Rey looks Orelia fully in the face. Those blue-green eyes are warm with gratitude. Well. She should make more of an effort to help Orelia, once Hux is gone. “It’s good to be here with you,” Rey says. The words are like rust on her tongue, the edges flaking away as she tries to hold them together.

  


* * *

  


Kaydel Ko Mitaka is an elegant old lady now. That golden blonde hair is pure white now, and the pleasant face is wrinkled and soft. Her dark eyes light up when she sees Rey, and she bows stiffly.

“Your Highness,” she says. “I’m so pleased you came.” Her gaze lingers a moment on Rey’s blue eyes, but she makes no comment.

Rey attempts something more than her “Empress” smile, which is benignly empty of any true feeling. “Kaydel. It’s good to see you.”

The room is filled with people anxious to greet her. It’s an odd thing, seeing the same faces she knew for so many years suddenly twenty years older. She’s reminded of a saying she heard once: you get the face you deserve. It appears to be true.

Kaydel approaches her after the brunch itself is over and people are mingling. “Will you come sit with me for a minute or two, Empress?” she asks.

“I told you to call me Rey,” Rey scolds, but Kaydel just shakes her head.

“You must be so proud of your daughter.” She indicates Orelia, who is speaking with a small group of Muun women—wives of the heads of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.

“She will be a fine empress,” Rey agrees.

“And the emperor?” Kaydel looks concerned. “How is he?”

Rey is careful. She doesn’t know Kaydel anymore. It’s been more than forty-five years since she was in the Resistance. “He’s doing better,” she says, noncommittally.

“Good, good.” Kaydel draws a small datapad out of her bag and shows Rey a few holos of her children and grandchildren. “Dopheld was a grand admiral for many years, you know. He’s retired now, and we divide our time between here and Tanaab. Our son has a farm there. It’s very peaceful.”

“So everything turned out well for you,” Rey says.

Kaydel looks sad a moment. “Yes, it did.” She looks around furtively. “It seems forever ago that we were stuffed in bunkers at some new base every month, always too hot or cold. Stars, what was that freezing planet called?”

“I can’t remember now,” Rey confesses.

“Exactly. A different life.”

Rey takes the opening. “Did you ever hear what happened to Finn?” she whispers, close to Kaydel’s ear.

“Finn? That ex-stormtrooper? I’d almost forgotten him.” Kaydel whispers too. “He escaped from the First Order with Poe Dameron?”

Rey hesitates. Kaydel barely remembers him. It’s not Rey’s duty to tell her anything. Rey only wants someone else to care, to feel the pain of it as she does. It’s selfish, but… “He was working security at a cantina on Lothal about ten years after the war ended. Got captured in some raid and his old file came up. He was executed.”

She doesn’t add the other half of the story, that it was Kylo who went to do it himself. That her lover killed her first and dearest friend out of misplaced fear and jealousy and she doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

Kaydel’s hand comes up to her mouth. She turns to look at Rey. “Oh Rey,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”

There. That was what Rey was looking for, wasn’t it? Someone to be sorry that her old friend is dead. But without the other half, Kaydel’s compassion is meaningless. In truth, Rey doesn’t want sympathy for Finn’s death, she wants understanding for still loving Kylo, despite what he did. She regrets now that she burdened Kaydel with this.

“It was long ago,” she says. “A different life, as you say.”

Kaydel looks at her sharply, then nods slowly. “Yes, of course,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry that we didn’t have a chance to be friends over the years,” she says then, changing the subject.

“The emperor preferred that I didn’t associate with anyone from the past,” Rey says, not without bitterness.

Kaydel’s lips twist slightly. “Dopheld was the same. I suppose they were always afraid we would run off and leave them.”

Rey leans in close again. “Did you ever try? Did you ever want to?”

“No,” Kaydel says, then stops herself. “No, that’s not true. You asked if I wanted to. Yes, I did, more than once. But my mother raised me to be a practical woman. She was so shocked when I joined the—” she waves her fingers to indicate. Some things are best not said aloud on Coruscant. Even their quiet chat is drawing many eyes. “Well. We lost, didn’t we? No point in being torn up about it. I was one of the lucky ones.”

Kaydel is avoiding Rey’s eyes, though. The old shame still surrounds her like a cloud. She is a survivor, like Rey, both of them skilled at shedding one skin to take on another. They’re adaptable; that’s their problem. They’re far too willing to bend and flex under each new pressure, unable to see when their forms changed beyond recognition.

Would Snoke have allowed her to die? Survival always felt like the only option, but maybe it wasn’t. What pain could have been avoided if she had just stopped trying to adapt? Her children, and theirs, wouldn’t exist, but perhaps there is one—gone now—who would.

Kylo. How can she forgive him? How can she not?

  


* * *

  


Rey goes to Hux in the early afternoon. Taral is sitting with him and has brought a dejarik board. Hux despises dejarik—a _child’s_ game—but he looks engaged enough now. 

“Ey,” he says, then winces.

Taral stands, offering his place. “I’m winning,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves.

Rey sits and studies the board. It’s true. Either Hux hasn’t been making much effort or—

 _I find my strategic thinking skills to be somewhat affected by my illness,_ Hux projects to her, in an off-hand way that does nothing to disguise the despairing resentment underneath.

Rey was always terrible at dejarik. But even she can see that Taral was only a turn or two from winning. Her k’lor’slug wriggles impatiently as she considers her move. 

_This reminds me of the hours you and Kylo spent playing horansi,_ she tells Hux as she moves her slug forward to take his savrip. 

_Ah, now that game has actual strategy._

_It’s boring._

He laughs a little, a dry coughing sound more than anything. _Horansi was the best thing to come out of the Rebellion._

_Luke tried to teach it to me. I found it just as boring back then._

The card game was one of the few things Kylo had retained from his earlier life. A favourite of the X-wing pilots of the Rebellion, Luke had passed it onto his nephew in turn.

Hux stares down at the board, but she can sense he isn’t really thinking about it. _You didn’t come back last night._

_You were asleep. I didn’t want to have to climb over you again._

_About that._ His eyes twinkle mischievously. _Go look around the other side of the bed._

She stands up and goes to see. A neat set of steps has been fixed there. To her surprise, she can feel her whole face reddening. She imagines him asking Taral to fetch it and put it there waiting for her. 

_Are you blushing?_ Hux asks in fascination.

_No!_

_You are displeased then._

_No! Not that, it’s just embarrassing that…_

Hux nods in understanding. _I wanted you to be comfortable. Taral told me that Snoke extended your stay. I was hoping you would come sleep with me every night._

Annoyingly, her face heats again. _I would like that._

_Does the extension from Snoke have something to do with your eyes?_

She looks at him in confusion as she sits down again, then remembers. _Oh. Are they still blue?_

_Quite, yes._

_It’s not really connected._ She stops herself. _In a way it is, I suppose. I was trying to see the future, to know what will happen in the time Snoke gave me._

 _If I’ll die before you have to leave, you mean._ His eyes are steady on her.

She looks away. _Yes._ _Anyway,_ she rushes on, _I managed to tap into the light side somehow and it went into my eyes. It was all very mystical. All that Force stuff you hate._

_And what did you learn?_

She bites her lip, not wanting to tell him what the darkness told her. _The light was unclear. “There is no death, only the Force.” It’s the final line of the Jedi code._

 _I’m familiar with it._ He pauses and she’s relieved that he has taken this as the only answer the Force gave her. _You’ve felt people die before,_ he says then, carefully. 

A red blade flashes in her hand, screams carry on the wind. _Yes._

_What happens? In the Force, I mean._

_The person becomes one with the Force,_ she tells him quietly. _All the energy that made up their consciousness ... dissolves. The Force is the energy of life itself. We’re born from it, and we return to it, again and again, in infinite combinations._

They were Luke’s words, Jedi words. But just as true for any dark Force-user, or anyone, really. The Force was all one, the light and dark just different sides of the same street.

_So there is no afterlife. No consciousness after death, except if you’re a Force ghost._

_That’s right._

He sits back in his chair and contemplates. _No one ever has to atone for their sins? There’s no punishment, and no reward. What’s the use of living a good life?_

 _You’re looking at it the wrong way. Death isn’t what you should live your life for. Life itself is the purpose. A good life is one that helps the Force create and recreate. A bad life destroys more than it creates._ She and Luke had sat in front of a crackling fire, the hard, damp earth unyielding underneath her as he told her the secrets of the Force.

He sighs and she sees him thinking of Hosnian Prime, and Chandrila and Corellia, and a half-dozen more over the years that he ordered wiped away from the galaxy. _I have lived a bad life, then_.

 _We have lived in bad times,_ she says.

 _Only because we made them so_.

  


* * *

  


They go out to the garden again for Hux’s “airing,” as he’s taken to calling it, like he’s a smelly old blanket that needs hanging in a fresh breeze every day to become tolerable again. She had a blanket like that on Jakku, but fresh breezes were hard to come by there, and besides, everyone stank anyway.

The sun is bright, and there are flowers on the juna bush. She wonders if the berries will emerge before she has to go. Kylo loved the dark purple fruits that ripened in the early summer. 

_Do you remember that time with the berries…?_ she asks Hux.

It had started innocently enough with Rey eating a dish of the fruits as the three of them lounged in bed. Hux was reading reports on his datapad while Kylo lay with his head in Hux’s lap, Hux’s fingers running through his long hair.

Then Kylo “got the mischief in him,” as Hux used to say and before long there were berries and juice everywhere—even Hux’s datapad was sticky the next morning—and Kylo’s warm tongue was lapping it all up off both of them.

 _That wicked tongue,_ Hux sighs now in memory. 

Kylo had a way of using it that made it seem like whatever he was tasting at the time was the most delicious thing in the world. He licked lazily, indulgently, like he was giving himself a rare treat. 

_He used to crawl under the desk sometimes, when I was working too late._ Hux shivers. _He would tease me with his tongue while I pretended I was completely unaffected. I even took a holo-call once or twice while he was doing it._

She laughs. _And how did that go?_

_I have no idea, couldn’t remember the calls then or now._

She sees warm brown eyes looking up, those beautiful plush lips wrapped around Hux as he squirmed and tried to hold back his moans.

They spend the afternoon trading snippets of memory. Her first impression of meeting Hux—cold and pompous; his first impression of meeting her— _I was smitten. Smitten? Yes, smitten;_ time spent playing with their children—a rare event on Hux’s part; lazy evenings spent with Hux and Kylo playing horansi while she sat and read. She had always been studying, trying to catch up on years of ignorance.

 _I was thinking again of our first time together, and afterward,_ he says, after they pause in the stream of memories.

_Oh?_

_I was convinced that you wanted Kylo more than me, that you’d only accepted me to have an excuse to get closer to him. You had this connection that I could never compete with._

_Is that why you sent him to me when I’d avoided you for days after that first night?_

_I was jealous_ , he says frankly. _It was a test of sorts to see if you would take just me._

Kylo’s dark eyes looked down at her. He had removed his helmet and stood, twisting it in his hands. “The emperor wants to know if you’ll join him in his rooms for dinner this evening.”

“All the protocol droids are too busy to carry this message?”

He raised an eyebrow but was silent.

“Who’s invited to this dinner?” she asked.

“Just you,” he said neutrally.

“I see. You may tell his Highness that if he wants to invite ‘just me’ for dinner, he can come ask me himself.”

 _I didn’t know what to make of your response,_ he confesses. 

_You did come and ask me, though. And we did have dinner. And that one night of just us._

_It was nice, but not right. I knew straight away, even when we were eating. I should have stopped, should have invited him too…_

She catches a snatch of a thought from Hux— _thinking too much again, not acting when I should—_ but it’s quickly stifled.

 _In the morning,_ he continues, _he was wearing his mask in my office, something he never did._

“Why are you wearing that damn thing?” Hux’s voice sounded shaky even to his own ears. A sick feeling had settled into the pit of his stomach. The last time he’d felt so bad was when he’d stolen a cake from the kitchen as a child. His mother was blamed for it and had a week’s pay docked.

Kylo stared at him through chrome and durasteel. “My head is cold today,” he said flatly.

“It’s perfectly warm in here. Take it off.”

Silence lengthened between them. “I prefer to wear it.”

“Why?”

“It’s part of my uniform. I should wear it at all times.”

Hux glared at him in frustration. “Take it off.”

“Fine.” 

During the long seconds of clanking and clunking mechanisms, in the instant before Kylo took the mask off, Hux wanted to shout, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to see!”

He felt himself flinching as Kylo slowly pulled it over his head, shook out his hair. Hux didn’t know what he was expecting: tear-stained eyes, trembling lips, perhaps an ill-disguised sneer? 

Instead Kylo only had that slightly smug expression he always seemed to wear when he pulled off the mask. It’s as if he were saying, “Look at me. Look. You were ready for a monster, and I am one. But a monster can be beautiful, too. Isn’t that the most terrifying thing?” He was too aware of himself, of his own magnetism. 

Hux had always despised that arrogance, while secretly being alternately entranced and jealous. His father had been charismatic; he drew people’s eyes when he walked into a room. Hux copied his posture, his clipped way of speaking, the cool distance at which he kept everyone, but it was all a show. Inside he was that thin slip of a boy, weak-willed and useless. A boy pretending to be a man. 

And Kylo knew. He _knew._ He _saw._ In the beginning, he mentioned it often. He teased Hux, poked and prodded at his soft spots, his finger pressing in deeper every time. Hux hated him. Couldn’t stand to speak to him. 

Except.

Hux’s eyes sought out the blankness of the mask whenever Kylo appeared. A small thrill ran up his spine when Kylo stepped in too close, getting in Hux’s face with his sarcasm and rudeness. He tried to hide his attraction deep inside, but he suspected Kylo saw that too—thankfully he never mentioned it. 

“What did you expect, Hux? That I would be crying because you fucked your wife and I wasn’t invited?” Kylo sneered at him.

Hux took a step closer to Kylo, whose back was already near the wall. “Did you want to be invited?” he asked.

Kylo swallowed. 

Hux closed the distance between them. Up close, Kylo’s eyes _were_ a little damp. He was pale and sweating and looked like he hadn’t slept.

Hux lifted his hand and traced Kylo’s jaw. “Consider this a formal invitation,” he said, and kissed Kylo on the corner of his mouth.

Kylo made a little sound, not quite a whimper, as Hux kissed the other corner, then along his bottom lip. 

“We would like it if you would join us again,” Hux said. “Permanently.” He nibbled at Kylo’s lip and pushed at his chest so he took a step backwards to lean against the wall.

Their lips met. Kylo’s mouth was warm and tasted of caf and the darkness of a deep blue sky in the minutes after twilight. And that tongue—that soft, wide tongue—it swept into Hux’s mouth and he forgot to hide himself, forgot his perfect posture and his controlled voice and his coolness. Kylo was heat itself and Hux melted into him. 

_And that’s when we went to wake you up,_ Hux says.

She is finding it a little difficult to breathe. The memory of their kiss was searing. She and Kylo, and she and Hux, had both had their own dynamic. But Hux and Kylo were so different together. Their interactions always had some element of a battle to them, a rivalry that could never be completely dropped.

 _I’m glad,_ she tells Hux now. _We were all too stubborn for our own good. You were brave to say what you wanted._

 _Brave._ He rolls the word around in his mind and she sees all the connotations attached to it for him, primarily to do with fighting and the courage it takes to strike at another, whether from thousands of kilometres away or looking at the adversary right in the eye.

 _You’ve never killed someone up close, have you?_ she asks.

He lifts his head and squints up into the sun. _It’s hard to say._

  


* * *

  


Much later, Rey presents herself at Hux’s room in her nightclothes again. She had sat longer with the family after dinner than she had planned to, but the mood had been friendly and warm. For a few minutes she was able to pretend that this was her due after years of motherhood and sacrifice, that she’d earned the right to sit at a table with her family and enjoy them.

Her grandchildren are unexpectedly interesting. They have the black and white opinions of the young, despite their years of court training. Even so, they are full of fire and enthusiasm for their interests, covering subjects as diverse as the ongoing rebellion against the Empire—hotly debating the causes and ways of dealing with it—to the best holonet sources for new music and fashion, and everything in between.

Most heartening is that they are all _good_ people. Better people than she, and Hux, and Kylo. Even her twins, as damaged as they are, are so entwined in the family that they would never seek to harm anyone within it.

 _We’re not all bad,_ she tells Hux now, as she slides into bed beside him. The little set of steps on her side was much appreciated.

“Hmm?” he says out loud. She can see how tired he is, his eyelids drooping as he blinks slowly at her.

His thought are fragmented, not concentrated enough for him to bring together speech in his mind.

“Our children and grandchildren,” she says. “They’re good people.”

He half smiles at her, and the eye on the good side of his face crinkles up. He is pleased at her words and happy that she is here with him. He sends her images of them in bed with their arms wrapped around each other.

“Do you want me to hold you?” she asks. 

He nods with effort.

She rolls onto her side, pressing herself against him. Her arm drapes carefully across his stomach. He is terribly thin and bony, hardly anything left of him at all.

His eyes close and his breathing evens out. 

The lights are still on low, so she watches him. Tiny tremors travel over his face, and occasionally his arm beside her twitches. She leans over to his cheek and kisses it. It’s a little rough where his stubble is coming in, which is achingly familiar, and he smells of medicine and old age, which isn’t.

Closing her eyes, she listens to him breathe and tries to align her breaths with his. She reaches up so her hand rests over his heart. It beats strongly, steadily. He’s alive. Even like this, all skinny and exhausted and broken, he’s so alive. 

The Force pulses around and through him. _You can’t have him,_ she tells it. _Not yet._

  


* * *

  


She wakes once in the night. Her arm is still wrapped around Hux and for a moment, she feels a shadow at her back, a weight of warm flesh and soft lips at her neck. When she comes a little more into wakefulness the feeling is abruptly gone and she has to stifle a choked cry. 

Hux gasps beside her; she must have cried out in her mind, projecting all around her. His thoughts are a tumble of confusion, half caught back in the dream he was having—she sees herself sleeping, still, silent, while Hux watches; he can’t _decide_ —half certain that he is under some kind of attack. He has managed to wrench his good arm away from her and he is reaching up to protect his face.

 _Kylo?_ he thinks.

“No, no,” she whispers. “I’m sorry, it was only me.”

Slowly, he lowers his hand. _Rey?_

“It’s all right, Armitage,” she says. Carefully she tucks his arm back by his side. She rolls onto her back and puts her hand in his. Her thumb strokes his palm. “Go back to sleep.”

He settles down, but his mind is whirling. She keeps seeing images of her younger self sleeping. Suddenly the image disappears, as if it were filed away back into the depths of Hux’s mind. His mind sharpens. _Is it possible to be a dark side ghost?_

The idea has a certain appeal. She could watch over her family, offer them the benefit of her wisdom—she snorts internally at this—find out what happens hundreds, _thousands_ of years into the future. 

_Snoke has met a few Sith ghosts in his exploration of old tombs, or so he says._

_You don’t believe him?_

_I don’t_ disbelieve _him. But the Force is an odd thing, it can leave echoes. That’s how we can have holocrons, for example. Who’s to say what’s a ghost, and what’s only an echo?_

 _And you?_ he pursues. _Would you want to be a ghost? Or an echo, even?_

She squeezes his hand. _There will be no one left for me to haunt._

 _Snoke,_ he offers. He rarely mentions her master—his master, too, after a fashion. He and Snoke speak often, have worked closely together to fashion the First Order Empire into something strong and enduring. 

Deep inside her there is a sense of horror at the idea of being trapped in the afterlife with Snoke, ageless and unchanging as he is. A thought skitters across her mind: perhaps he is preparing for this even now, ready to perform some bloody ritual at her death to bind her to him forever. She shudders.

_No._

__  


* * *

  


When she wakes again, Hux’s head is turned towards her and his eyes are open. She gets the sense that he has been watching her for some time. It’s early, weak sunlight filtering through the curtains.

“Good morning,” she says softly. 

His eyes take on a familiar intent look and his slim hand is heavy on her thigh, stroking gently at the soft skin there.

Warm desire floods her mind from him. He half smiles and his hand slides higher. Hers travels down, over collapsed ribs and soft belly, to find the hardness between his legs. Not so stiff as it used to be, but his eyelids droop when her hand closes around him. 

_Reyyyyyyyyyy…_

  


* * *

  


She retreats afterwards to wash the stickiness from her hand and the wetness from between her thighs. Her eyes have returned to their normal hazel and her cheeks are flushed. She is _glowing_. Hux had asked her to spend the whole day with him. The following day is Empire Day, and she will be busy with attending the ceremony and reception.

 _Dejarik?_ she asks him when she returns. He is brighter, too, and it hurts a little to see the gleam in his eyes.

He sighs and nods.

They play several games, and she wins them all. He seems to take it reasonably well, but his good hand is clenched by the end of the fourth game and she suggests a walk outside instead. 

She can feel how tired his mind is from concentrating on the game and their mental speech, so she just sits quietly beside him in the garden, feeling the sun on her face. Some things weren’t taken from her: the sun, the sky, the living Force. She wonders sometimes if she would have felt the Force sooner if she had lived on a forested planet like Takodana or Kashyyyk instead of the barren wastelands of Jakku. She twines her mind lazily with his, and feeds him the sensation of life all around them.

 _Chaotic,_ he thinks.

“Not chaotic. All the flowers and leaves on the juna bush there are the same are they not? Isn’t that the order you always sought?” she asks him, aloud, to give his mind a rest.

“Ha,” he wheezes. He is amused though. _I can’t read anymore,_ he says abruptly.

Startled, she turns to him. “What?”

_I remember the shapes of the letters, but they don’t make any sense._

_Oh._ He was holding his datapad in his hand the other day—looking at pictures, she remembers suddenly. He signed the regency document—no that was just a thumb and retina scan, and a numeric code. She doesn’t know what to say. _I’m sorry,_ she offers.

He doesn’t answer. His mind is flowing slowly, thinking of the feel of her in bed that morning. The soft wetness under his fingers, the sound of her cries, her hand stroking him just the way he liked. He is filled with contentment as he falls into a drowsy haze.

She draws shadows to her to block the light from burning his pale skin. The dark side is in the growing things, too. It’s part of the living Force; death and decay as necessary to life as growth and flowering. He half-dreams: she sees her own face and Kylo’s, warm and laughing, the feel of her arm under his hand as she stands by his side, the sound of crowds cheering, a red light surging into space. He watches her sleep, guilty and afraid—

His mind fuzzes, starts fraying, and at first she thinks he is falling further into a true dream. Then his eyes open and he makes an inarticulate sound. Tangled in his mind, he draws her down, down, blurring... 

He is looking at her, but her energy has spread out and is smeared across the garden, pixel-dots of her skin mingle with the green of leaves. His body is no longer contained. He is _enormous_ , all encompassing. He looks at his hand and it is limitless, only a small part of the energy around them. It flickers in and out of reality—where is it?—over there, by that tree, his own hand waves at him merrily. No, now it’s reattached and it’s shrinking back into him, he’s becoming smaller and smaller, so he can fit inside the palm of her hand. That was all he wanted, for her to carry him with her when she left.

He snuggles into the shape of her palm. The static of it webs him in and this is right, this is— _don’t go,_ he thinks—and he’s _huge_ again, larger than the trees and everything is so bright and loud. It hurts. It hurts. His ears are fizzing, it’s someone talking— _no_ , they are screa-ea-ea-minggggg—so bright, so bright. 

_Chaos._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!
> 
> The stroke section of this chapter was inspired by a TED talk from a neuro-scientist who experienced a stroke and was able to remember and recount her very strange experiences. I highly recommend it. Watch it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note this chapter contains mild gore and attempted suicide in the scene that starts: _Exhaustion eventually drives her to crawl into the high bed beside Hux_ to the end of that scene. What happened is referenced less graphically in later scenes in the chapter so skipping it will not leave you behind on plot.

Hux’s skin appears thin, stretched over the bones of his skull, pale and waxy. His face is that of a stranger. He breathes slowly—on his own now at least—and she’s hard pressed not to count every time his chest lifts and falls. A little part of her clings onto his mind, watching and hoping for some solidity to come to his thoughts. All is dark inside him, no dreams, no awareness. She is afraid to let go.

Her own body is stiff and tired. She’s hungry; it’s late at night now, and she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. At first she waited outside the surgery theatre while they operated, trying to stem the bleeding in his brain. Since he was put back in his own bed, she has sat beside it watching him.

All the children and grandchildren have come and gone. She refuses to think of them saying goodbye, and no one dared say the word out loud while she glared so fiercely at them. Only Taral has stayed, a statue by the door, no words exchanged between them, though she knows he can sense her hold on Hux’s mind.

Initially Orelia had spoken of cancelling the festivities tomorrow for Empire Day, but Julion had firmly put that to rest. Besides, Hux wouldn’t have wanted anything to stop on his account, and more practically, he wasn’t going to attend anyway. The only words Rey has spoken since Hux’s collapse were to say that she would be staying with him. Julion and Orelia had exchanged a glance, but had agreed.

“Anakin,” she says now, and Taral starts. She hasn’t said his name since the day he returned from his training, when he told her he was _Taral Ren_ now, as his father had been. His adolescent pride had been a flimsiplast shield over the terrors underneath, and so she had only nodded slightly and repeated his new title. 

When he took up his position for the first time at the emperor’s back, broad shoulders as square under dark robes as his father’s had been, his father’s old mask obscuring his face, she had been screaming inside. Later she had gone to the training room in a blind rage and destroyed everything within it. She had _hated_. 

Taral walks over to stand at her side, looking down at Hux. “It’s been a long time since I heard that name,” he says, almost to himself. Is _Taral_ the name he calls himself in the depths of his mind? In Kylo’s mind, that first time on Starkiller, she had seen the name _Ben_. Ben had been tempted by his family, by the light. By the time she met Kylo face to face again, years later, he had completed his training, and Ben was nothing but a memory. Ben hadn’t been strong enough; he would never have been as strong as Darth Vader. Kylo was stronger than Ben, but it must be remembered, Darth Vader is dead, too.

“I don’t remember my father anymore,” Taral says. “The emperor was always kind to me. Sometimes I thought of him as a father. But I reminded him too much of Kylo Ren. I see it sometimes, that it hurts him to look at me. Like it hurts you.” 

He says it matter-of-factly, without any animosity. His hand rests on her shoulder and squeezes. A gentleness runs through him, a sweetness that Snoke could never quite eradicate. Unlike Taral’linas, he didn’t blame Rey for what happened. He just accepted it and lived with it as best he could. Another survivor. He clings to the memory of Kylo with a sort of desperate pride, despite his father having disappeared from his recollections.

She wonders if there is anyone special for him here at the palace. If so, she’s never heard anything of it. Perhaps he would have liked to marry, to have someone to be sweet to and be held by. She rests her hand on top of his gloved one. “Armitage loves you very much,” she tells him. They both know she lies.

  


* * *

  


Exhaustion eventually drives her to crawl into the high bed beside Hux, but away from him, so she won’t disturb his rest. The bed is large enough that she can lie a body length away from him, but she hooks her mind into his, determined that if he should stir while she sleeps, she will instantly be aware of it.

When she wakes in the morning he is as still and silent as ever. She leaves him for some time to refresh herself and so the nurses can care for him. Still famished from the day before, she heads to the dining room for a quick breakfast, a corner of her mind still linked with his.

The darkness of his mind seems to warm a little as she’s walking back to his room, and her footsteps hurry along the lengthy corridors. The palace is empty of life. Only a few guards remain outside and two at Hux’s door, the rest of the family and court having travelled to Monument Plaza for the rally and speech. Something is being unveiled today, too—she’s barely paid attention, some weapon or new kind of ship that Hux had a hand in?—the word _nexus_ sticks in her mind.

Hux’s colour is slightly better, and his mind is surfacing from the depths into a proper sleep now. The speeches won’t start until later in the morning. She can hardly imagine he would be conscious by then, but there is a small seed of hope buried in her chest. He could open his eyes at any moment and speak to her again. Just once more she’d like to hear his voice, his real voice, saying her name out loud. 

_I love you,_ she tells him, pushing the words firmly into his mind. Perhaps there’s some part of him beyond her reach that can hear it. Or maybe, if she brands it into him, he’ll see the words imprinted there when he wakes. He can’t read anymore, she remembers. But these words are not written in Aurebesh, they are burned into his flesh so that he _feels_ them, the way your arm hangs at your side and you know it’s part of you.

They hadn’t often said the words out loud. Once, Kylo had been drunk—a rare occurrence, but there had been a reunion of sorts when the original group of Knights of Ren had all found themselves on Coruscant at the same time—and he had repeated the words over and over as he sloppily wrestled first her, then a protesting Hux, into the bed. Hux had been outwardly horrified, but inside his mind he had been lapping up the words like a man dying of thirst. 

And she, well, she had repeated it every time he said it, almost squealing with laughter as he threw her on the bed and tickled her. Inside she had been terrified that saying it out loud would ruin something. That everything might suddenly _stop_ and Kylo would be standing tall and straight, hidden behind black robes and mask, while Hux’s customary sneer would find its way back onto his face instead of the tentative grin that he was trying so hard to hide. Only she would remain on the bed, vulnerable on her back, while the two men stared down at her in distaste.

It was a fear she carried deep within her whenever they were together. She was worried she would be found out, that they would notice one day she was a scrap of nothing from nowhere, hardly the fitting mate for an emperor or the grandson of the last Sith. Just a scavenger, as Kylo once said. The road to that point was difficult to perceive, all the twists and turns it had taken, all the possibilities she had turned aside from to arrive there.

After her training with Snoke was complete, she joined the Knights of Ren herself. Back then Kylo had still been their master, nominally at least, though his duties as Taral kept him at Hux’s side mostly. The First Order Empire was already strong four years into Hux’s reign, but the galaxy was a big place, and many planets in the Mid- and Outer Rim had not yet learned that the new rulers were not content to ignore them and huddle in the Core, as so many had before. Hux was a detail man, and no system, no matter how insignificant, escaped his attention.

She had been sent out time after time with teams of knights and stormtroopers to quell unrest and rebellion. The Empire believed in swift and decisive action, and the red lightsabers of the knights were the quickest and surest of all weapons for dealing with fractious populations. 

On her last mission as a knight she had been badly injured. A blaster shot arrived in amongst a shower of its companions—far too many to be blocked—and sizzled its way into her left shoulder. It wasn’t the first blaster hit she’d taken, but the shooter was near and the wound was deep, agonizing. Hot blood trickled down her arm, but she was trained in pain. It strengthened her connection to the darkness. Pain was an aid, not a hindrance. 

_“Through pain comes power,”_ Snoke always said. Her power was a sandstorm, shifting and unpredictable. All howling wind and blocked out-sun, choked breaths and flaying grains. She raised new landscapes, burying the old. She scoured and cleansed and when she was done the sky was a violent, sharp blue under a merciless sun, and nothing was left.

Her blade flashed and her power whirled and the enemy was gone for a time. It was long enough for her anger to ebb away, short enough that there was no time to bind her wound. She cradled her arm to her chest and ran on, her fellow knights following behind. 

The second shot that hit was a lucky one. Lucky for her in that it hit her belly instead of her heart. This time her body betrayed her. A rifleman crouching behind an energy shield somewhere ahead wasn’t so lucky. She fell to her knees, calling all the little grains of power around her to swirl out again, to strip the enemy of his flesh. He was soon nothing but a collection of bones, but she was falling forward onto her hands and her left arm couldn’t support her.

The knights went on without her. The fight was more important than any one of them. Wrenching off her helmet and mask, she curled into herself and called on the pain. Her breath came in shallow, open-mouthed pants. A hole gaped in her stomach, and glistening innards threatened to desert her. She held them back from escaping with her right hand and her will, caging them with the Force. 

She had never been able to resist pressing down on a bruise, just to feel the muted pain of it, her body’s protest. Life on Jakku made her an expert on bruises. She was never without several, all in various stages of purpling, then greening, then yellowing away to nothing. The pain was a sign she was alive. At times she was so alone that she began to wonder if she even existed; then, the warning of pain from her body was comforting. Her inbuilt reflexes were an ally of sorts, proof that someone was looking out for her. _Take care_ , her body told her. A nervous system was a dull friend, but a constant one.

Tentatively, she pressed at the injury on her shoulder. Her skin was charred around the edges of it, and black flakes fell away at her touch. Her defenses alerted her to danger. _Stop that,_ they warned, with a burst of pain. Now that she was lying still, blood only sullenly leaked from the centre of the wound, rather than flowing out in time with her pulse. She pressed again, closer to the middle. This time the warning was closer to a scream. Her vision blurred and her damaged stomach heaved.

Sweat dripped off her forehead onto the hard ground. She lay in the middle of a narrow, paved street, lined with shops on either side. They were closed now, of course. In the distance, blasters whined and lightsabers hummed. Her eyes fluttered shut. She could have been on a random planet at any time within the last twenty-five thousand years and heard these sounds. It was reassuring to think of herself that way. Not as someone necessary to create the orderly future the new Empire promised, just one random person, perhaps a little more gifted with the Force than most, who had known a little love, and a great deal of pain, but who didn’t matter at all in the larger scheme of things.

Inside the hole in her belly, she was starting to feel a warm roundness as blood slowly filled her up. With the Force covering the open wound, the blood could not escape, but it was useless to her like this anyway. It was merely a waste liquid waiting to be expelled, forever divorced from its travels through her veins and arteries.

She relaxed her hold and there was a tremendous gush as the blood fell out, soaking her clothing and the pooling around her. She was shivering now, even as sweat dripped into one eye, over the hill of the bridge her nose, and then into the other. The smell of hot metal clogged her nose. Behind it, something darker and more animal, a richness of death. Intestines slipped lazily from their moorings to shrivel under unfamiliar light. Everything that kept her alive was used to dwelling in the dark.

She pressed against the edges of the wound and her vision went black. Her warning system was close to collapse, the cry in her mind now just a high-pitched buzzing. She touched inside herself. It was hot and slippery and sickeningly soft. Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see. The only sound now was the desperate pound of her heart. Slowly she stroked along the tattered edges of her flesh. The line between undamaged, and annihilated skin was so close. The blood there was stickier, already trying to clot in a futile bid to save her.

With a gasp, she plunged her hand into the hole and fisted around something smooth and wet. She pressed down.

  


* * *

  


When she woke later in her room at Snoke’s fortress, she thought for a moment that she’d dreamed it. A new hole stretched in her mind, wherein she died and then was found and healed. But a tenderness remained in her stomach and shoulder to speak of reality, and she lay for awhile pressing into them and feeling the freshness of the pain. 

Snoke came and sat on the edge of her bed. He took her hand in his enormous one and stroked her hair from her brow. His grey eyes were worried. “You were wounded. I understand that you made it worse.”

Worse. She supposed that was correct. Her mind was hazy, and it hurt to focus on his withered face.

His hand tightened on hers. “Don’t go away,” he said softly. 

Her eyes traced over the deep cleft in his skull, the web of scar tissue around his mouth. She closed her eyes. Her mind was filled with the smell of hot metal and decay as he gently pushed into her memories to see what she had done.

His breath was shaky when he was finished. Slumping a little, he lifted their joined hands so that the back of hers brushed his cheek. He turned his head, and his dry lips touched her skin. “Beloved.”

  


* * *

  


She huddled in bed for days, barely eating and drinking what the droids brought. Her hand was constantly resting on her stomach. No scar betrayed the hole that had opened in her, that her insides had seen the unforgiving light, that these things happened and she had not perished. A small mark remained on her shoulder, more a shine to her skin than a scar. She had been renewed, ready to fight again. 

Inside her mind she sat by the pit, legs dangling into the darkness. The pit was full, its hunger sated by her recent violence. But she was emptier than she’d ever been after a week or more’s starvation on Jakku, emptier than when her insides had gracefully exited her in a gush of blood. The hollowness had a weight to it that made it hard to catch her breath. When she closed her eyes, the back of her eyelids was lit by the red swing of her lightsaber, illuminating the faces twisted in horror, the relentless hum of her blade a steady note raised in harmony with screams both high and low. 

She wept this time. Usually she didn’t.

The pit’s surface was reflective. She could see her face in it, watch as tears dripped from golden eyes and disappeared into power. It wasn’t fussy about the pain it would consume; it was a generous parasite, giving her back power in return for the agony she fed it.

Snoke left her alone. This was the pattern now. He would give her some time, then he would pull her out of the pit and she would be off on her next mission. She was just a weapon that had been a little dulled and needed resharpening. He was her whetstone, the roughness she scraped herself against until she was fine and keen once more.

She glanced up in disinterest at the knock at the door. It would be a droid, come to tell her that Snoke’s patience had run out and she was to present herself to him. 

But no, there was a presence, one she hadn’t felt for quite some time.

The door opened, and Kylo Ren was there. She hugged the covers to herself as he approached the bed. He wasn’t wearing his mask and she peeked up at him to check the aging of the scar she gave him. It was no more than a pinkish line across his face now, gone silvery at the edges. He had lost the last gangliness of his youth and was a solid wall of muscle and deadly grace. His long hair was pulled back into a messy bun, and he had grown a goatee.

“Lady Ren,” he said, and she hated herself for recoiling from the steel in his voice. Hated herself even more for the wideness of her eyes and the tiny whimper she’d let out when he spoke.

Seeing her reaction, he _shrank_ , his broad shoulders hunching and his chest deflating so that he didn’t fill the room any longer. It was a startling transformation. Even more surprising was the crouch he dropped into beside her, so their eyes were level.

She was very aware that she hadn’t washed in days. That her face was still blotched red from a fit of crying only an hour or so before his unexpected arrival.

“Rey,” he amended, his deep voice less harsh. His dark eyes searched hers. “Master Snoke tells me you were wounded on Chalacta.”

Her throat was too tight to speak, so she nodded.

“You’re not well. Do your wounds need attention?”

His kindness was disconcerting. She shook her head. “I—” she cleared her throat, “I’m recovered.”

He raised a brow. 

“I’m well enough to return to duty, Master Ren,” she told him, resisting the urge to run a hand through the greasy tangle of her hair. She had sworn once she would never call him master. She had sworn a lot of things.

He nodded towards the refresher door. “Go, then, and refresh yourself. I’ll get us something to eat and drink.” He shut the door quietly behind him as he left the room in search of a droid.

Some time later, when she was dressed and feeling somewhat more human, she emerged from the fresher to find him sitting at her small dining table. The table was set with two plates and several steaming dishes filled with food.

She sat down nervously and spooned small portions of everything onto her plate. Her stomach growled and she rested her hand on it. It was only a fancy, but sometimes she thought that she felt different inside, as if when all her internal organs were packed back in their places, they were rearranged slightly, the corners and edges of them not fitting quite right against each other.

The last time they had sat together to eat had been at least two years ago, maybe three. She had been in the depths of her training then, a wild-eyed thing that could barely speak. Now she made extra effort to erase that image of herself from his mind, taking delicate bites and chewing them slowly while she looked down at her plate.

He ate in silence, quickly putting away large servings of everything, particularly a spicy-sweet noodle dish enhanced with real vegetables and cubes of veg-meat. 

She took a long gulp of her water, refilled her glass from a jug, and drank again. “Thank you, Master Ren,” she said, trying to put some life into her voice. Her bed called to her at her back, a siren’s song of pillows and warm blankets and oblivion.

“Taral Ren, now,” he corrected her. “The new master of Ren will take up her duties as soon as she reaches Coruscant. The old Jedi Temple has been renovated and is ready to house the knights.”

She looked up at him. “I’ll return with you to Coruscant, then?”

He tilted his head and watched her face. “Would you like to live with the other knights, rather than here with Master Snoke?”

She blinked rapidly, unsure what the correct answer was. “I’ll go where I am ordered to,” she said finally.

His eyes narrowed. “That isn’t what I asked.”

She felt him touch her mind and she clutched feebly at the arm of her chair with one hand, the other pressing into her stomach. “Don’t—” she said.

The feeling faded, but she flushed in embarrassment. It wasn’t for her to deny _him_ access to her mind. “I’m sorry,” she said. She should open her mind now, give him free passage into her thoughts, but she was frozen inside. It would be easier to stand and strip in front of him.

He waved a hand. “I won’t.” Then he leaned forward and his gaze was intent. “I need you to be honest with me. Would you like to live with the knights, or stay here?” Seeing the uncertain look on her face, he smiled slightly. “Perhaps something else?”

The brief surge of hope was as shocking as it was forbidden. It was obvious he’d sensed it—his eyes widened—but instead of the anger or disappointment she expected, he only appeared thoughtful.

“Come,” he said, pushing his chair back and standing. “Our master is waiting for us.”

  


* * *

  


She stumbled from Snoke’s study after he explained what her future was to be. Kylo’s footsteps were steady behind hers. With his longer legs it would be easy for him to catch up, but instead he only seemed to be following her. She disregarded him and headed for the door to outside. Meadows of long, rough grass stretched off as far as the eye could see. The sky here was always a blank grey, even when there weren’t any clouds.

She had met the emperor once, quite soon after she was knighted a year or so before, at a reception for all the knights and some higher-ups from the military. Emperor Hux gleamed in pure white robes trimmed with gold, Kylo a shadow at his back. The knights went unmasked in respect to their host. She hated her mask anyway and wore it as little as possible.

Hux had paused as she bowed to him in the receiving line. “Lady Rey Ren,” he repeated, when the protocol droid beside him introduced her, sharp eyes sweeping over her. His face was cold, and she thought him ridiculous in his white. He had the look of someone who was rarely pleased by anything, his lips set in a permanent sneer.

“Your Highness,” she murmured.

Their eyes met and he surprised her with a cool smile. “You’re the one who trained as a Jedi.” He glanced over his shoulder at Kylo behind him. “She gave you that scar, Ren?”

Kylo’s eyes were hard. He was embarrassed, she saw. Hux had made no effort to lower his voice and they were surrounded by listening ears. “Yes,” he said roughly.

She allowed a little of her amusement to show in her eyes as she smiled back at Hux. “Many years ago now, Your Highness.” When was the last time she smiled?

He looked a little startled at her forwardness. “Well, then. I expect I shall be hearing great things of you, Lady Ren.”

A symbol of hope, Snoke called her. Her story of struggle up from the deserts of Jakku to become a Knight of Ren and then catching the eye of the emperor himself… She could already imagine the breathless news briefings being prepared, welcoming this scavenger princess to her newly exalted position.

She stopped walking at a slight rise in the land and looked off to the distance, waiting for Kylo to catch up with her. They stood together in silence a moment, the wind stirring the long grass the only sound.

“I saw your ocean,” he said abruptly. 

She stiffened but didn’t turn to him.

“It was Ahch-To you saw for all those years on Jakku, wasn’t it? Luke Skywalker was waiting for you.”

She studied the sky as if searching it for an answer. It was overcast that day, clouds swollen with rain moving in. She loved the rain, even after months of being lashed by it almost daily on Ahch-To. Squalls had blown up often, dumping icy water on the little rocky island. Sometimes there had been real storms, when the waves became walls indistinguishable from the water pounding from the sky. On Snoke’s nameless planet the rain was gentler, a comforting drizzle that persisted for hours, leaving the ground soft and smelling of muck and wet vegetation.

Kylo had hunted her for many years when she was with Luke and the Resistance. She had known that he came to Ahch-To finally; Luke had dreamed of it and they had run. They had seen each other on numerous battlefields, but somehow the confrontation that seemed so inevitable had never quite come.

“I’ve wondered something,” she said. She could feel him looking at her. He was standing quite close, angled towards her, her shoulder almost touching the side of his upper arm.

“Yes?”

She turned her head to study his face. It was hard to read his expression. If anything, he seemed ... nervous? His gaze rested on her mouth. “You offered to teach me once.” She watched his mouth in turn, his full lips tightening at her words.

“Yes.”

“You would have brought me here, wouldn’t you?” 

“Yes,” he said again.

It wasn’t a surprise, but it hurt a little, a pinprick of pain in her heart. “So all roads led here, no matter what I did.” Even if she had left the Resistance, gone her own way like Finn had tried to, the man beside her would have hunted her. As soon as she picked up that lightsaber, her course was set. And if she hadn’t picked it up? Would the Force have found a way to send her here?

“I suppose they did,” he murmured.

A thought hit her. He _had_ hunted her, had been close enough to capture her often—could she really have slipped through his fingers every time? Was it possible that he avoided capturing her for six long years? She shuddered to think of the punishments Snoke would have visited on him for his repeated failures. It wasn’t arrogance to think of herself as so important a target; she knew that Snoke had wanted her from the first.

“I’ve followed your progress,” he said, as the silence stretched between them. “You’ve done well as a knight, carried out every mission given to you with exemplary results.”

“Thank you,” she said dully. Her eyes were still on his mouth, watching his lips move as he spoke.

“You’ve hated it.”

The words were bald, and she wasn’t sure if she was being accused of disloyalty. “I’ve followed orders to the best of my ability.”

“Master Snoke tells me that you retreat to your bed after every mission. Longer every time.”

“I—I simply need a few days to rest—”

“The medics say that you were found bleeding out into the street from a wound that you could have easily held closed with the Force for some time. They said your hand was inside your own stomach. That you had pulled out your own internal organs.”

“I—”

“You were a mess today.” He took hold of her chin, tilting it up so she was forced to look into his eyes. His fingers were bare; he had taken his gloves off to eat. He held her firmly, but his hands were gentle. “This is a better choice for you. No more fighting. No more killing. You’ll belong somewhere, have a family. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

“A choice,” she scoffed. Her heart pounded at her daring. The last time he looked at her like this—

“It’s not too late, I can speak to Snoke. If you prefer to go to Coruscant and live with the knights at the temple, you can. But your missions will be longer, and no one there will indulge these days in bed in between. Is that what you want?”

She couldn’t look away from his eyes, so golden brown in the daylight. They were full of an emotion she had forgotten—compassion. “Please,” she said, not knowing what she was pleading for.

He let out a long, ragged breath, then his mouth gently covered hers. His lips moved slowly until she responded, then he licked at her until she opened for him and her tongue met his. She could feel his breath on her face, was acutely aware of his hand gripping her chin. The kiss changed, she was pulled tight to his chest and he was groaning into her mouth in desperation. _This_ was the confrontation that seemed so inevitable for all those years.

He broke away finally, panting in her ear. “When I joined Snoke he promised me that if I served him well I would be emperor one day. When we won the war I went to him and asked him for my rewards. For an Empire, and for you.”

“For me?” she repeated, shocked.

His teeth found her earlobe and sank in. He kissed down her jawline and mouthed at her neck. For some reason her hands found themselves tangled in his hair. It had come loose from the bun and hung around his shoulders in dark waves, threaded here and there with silver.

“He said I was weak. That I had too much compassion for you. That I had failed to capture or kill you for years because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

She guided him back to her mouth. Their lips fit together better this time and his hand cupped the back of her neck, keeping her close. She didn’t want to hear about his weakness while her own was so startlingly evident. She didn’t want to hear of herself being bartered around in the same breath as empires were divvied out. Ten years of longing were spilling out of him and she was swept along in it, unsure where her own feelings flowed against the tide of his.

It had been so long since anyone touched her like this; maybe no one ever had. For once her nervous system was feeding her pleasure instead of pain. When was the last time she felt something good? The absence of pain was only relief; this was nourishment to her shattered nerves and fragmented heart. 

She had the sudden thought that they weren’t very far from the fortress, that anyone looking out the windows to the front would be able to see them. Snoke’s study faced this way, and he often sat and stared out over the long grass as he thought. Shame tingled up her spine. She had just learned that she was going to be married and she was kissing another man, someone she would be seeing every day standing at her husband’s back.

She wrenched away. He made a pitiful whining sound and reached for her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, furious.

His eyes were glassy and his lips were wet and red. She had to look away when his tongue swept out to lick over them.

“Did you choose this life?” she demanded. “Did you choose to serve him?”

He stared at her, a small crease between his brows. “I’ve had as much choice as you have had,” he said finally. Which is to say, none. His face was open now, his feelings on parade: desire, hurt over her rejection, then a dull sort of resignation as she turned from him and started back towards the fortress.

Their return was a repeat of the walk outside, Kylo following a few steps behind her in silence. When they got closer to the building, she saw Snoke standing at the window watching them. She couldn’t see the expression on his face, but later that night as she tried to sleep, she heard screams echoing from downstairs. 

The next day on the shuttle up to the ship, Kylo wore his mask and they didn’t speak again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	8. Chapter 8

“Imperial citizens and honoured guests, I would like to officially welcome you to our fifty-fourth Empire Day.”

The assembled crowd cheers wildly. Orelia is regal in elaborate robes of Imperial white. Her hair gleams in the sunlight and her face is composed but open, something Hux was never able to master. 

The knights guarding the door have come into Hux’s room to watch with Rey, bringing in a portable holo projector. The projection isn’t as clear as in the special chamber designed for it, but the colour and detail are much better than even fifteen or twenty years ago. The Empire has invested heavily in new technology, eager to push forward in areas that have stagnated for several hundred years.

“A week ago, my father, our beloved emperor, was taken ill. He is recovering well, surrounded by family, including my mother, the empress. He is very sorry to have to miss this event and sends his best wishes.” She pauses to appear appropriately regretful, yet assured of his return to health. 

“In the interim, I have taken on the role of regent, to ensure that our Empire remains strong.”

More cheering. After this, she launches into a long list of projects that have been completed over the past year to the benefit of Imperial citizens everywhere. It’s all feel-good works—schools, hospitals, research institutes and the like. A moving holo-montage shows the children who have been educated, the sick who have been healed, happy workers at newly created jobs.

She then announces a raft of investment into new projects for the coming year. Rey wryly notes a sizeable chunk of credits going to fund the arts on Taris. Being the daughter of an emperor must hold some perks, she supposes.

After this interminable rundown, Orelia’s tone changes.

“Sixty standard years ago, the Starkiller weapon was fired at the Hosnian system, destroying Hosnian Prime, four other inhabited planets, and the majority of the Republic fleet. This destruction was the beginning of the end of the New Republic. Within six years, the First Order Empire was born when the Treaty of Naboo was ratified, the remaining New Republic Senate dissolved, and the Resistance terrorists brought to justice.

“Intergalactic war is ugly. Many died on both sides so that we could have peace, and we remember their sacrifice.” Orelia bows her head respectfully and pauses a moment.

“Yet every great ruling power has had their weapon of mass destruction. From the Scourge of Malachor in times of old to the thought bomb that eradicated the Sith on Ruusan over a thousand years ago to the Clone Army of the old Republic and finally to the Death Stars of the last empire. It’s a terrible thing that once the ability to annihilate planets was realized, we could never forget it. The weapons can never be put away.

“The First Order Empire has brought peace to the galaxy through both our superior military might and strategic treaties with other major powers, allowing Mandalore, the Grand Hutt Council, the Hapan Consortium and others to rule their own sovereign space. For the first time in centuries, criminal cartels have been pushed to the furthest reaches of the Outer Rim and into the Unknown Regions. The Black Sun has crumbled. The Tenloss Syndicate is no more. We reach out across the stars, extending the hand of friendship to any who wish to ally with us. But our other hand must hold a weapon, ready to meet those who do not.

“My father was one of the key architects of the Starkiller weapon and the planet killer ships that came after it. Over the last two decades, in partnership with the experts at Sienar Fleet Systems, he has masterminded the design and construction of a new fleet of ships—the Nexus fleet. Individually, each ship is equivalent to an old _Resurgent_ -class Star Destroyer, with full TIE complements and the most advanced laser cannons. 

“But when three or more ships come together, their lasers can form a nexus, using any satellite, from an asteroid to a small moon, as a conversion point. The nexus concentrates and amplifies the laser, giving us the ability to decimate an entire planet within minutes. With five or more ships, the planet will be destroyed within seconds. Our initial fleet has thirty ships, but more are on the way.

“We hope that the Nexus fleet will never be needed, that the galaxy will never have another Hosnian Prime, Alderaan, or Chandrila.”

Orelia leans forward now, gripping the podium, her expression grim. “But I speak now to our enemies. To those who would do us harm, who think they can disrupt the Empire, or destroy what we have built over the last fifty-four years. To our enemies I say: we are ready. And we are implacable. The First Order Empire cannot be intimidated or weakened. We are ready.

“Our new fleet is mobile, agile and flexible, all attributes that the previous battlestations and planet killers lacked. To demonstrate the Nexus fleet’s capabilities, a small planet has been chosen in an uninhabited system. Five ships are waiting in hyperspace, and we go now to a live feed from our new flagship, the _Imperator,_ commanded by Grand Admiral Safin Falce _._ Citizens of the Empire, honoured guests, I give you: the Nexus fleet!”

The crowd roars in approval as the feed splits into two views. One shows the bridge of the flagship and a stern-faced dark-skinned woman in her late fifties busy giving orders to her crew. This must be Falce. The other displays the blackness of space interrupted by a rocky moon, behind which lies a grey hued planet, the thick clouds covering it only occasionally showing flashes of the grey of oceans and the washed out yellow-greens of land. 

Nothing distinctive stands out about the planet, but Rey feels a ripple in the Force as she studies it. _Silence_ , the Force whispers to her, that strange mix of dark and light wrapping around her; a tingle on her skin. 

“Jump back to normal space on my mark,” Falce says, her voice crisp and clear. This is pure propaganda theatre, the feed zooming in on her face, conveniently hiding any visible instrumentation that spies might wish to view. “Mark.”

On the other feed, five enormous ships appear out of nowhere. One moment there is emptiness, the next, death has come.

“Nexus fleet: acquire target,” Falce orders. After a moment, the call comes that all ships have acquired the target and are ready.

Rey leans forward. The Force is very uneasy now, reminding her of the grey-green skies on Ahch-To before a storm and how the wind whipped up the waves into whitecaps that thrashed against the rocks.

“Fire.”

Her ears buzz as blue lasers stab out from the ships to join together on the moon. It glows bright, the power expanding and stretching. 

“Nexus creation successful, time to planetary impact, seventy-five seconds,” Falce reports. Her voice is steady and calm.

The Force is in a frenzy now, lashing Rey with energy that she struggles to absorb or push away. Behind her, one of the knights makes a choked sound, and as she turns to look, the other knight wrenches her helmet off, leaning over to gasp for breath.

Rey’s eyes are jerked back to the holo-image before she can think to help them. The blue is the exact shade of the lightsaber she found so long ago in Maz’s cantina cellar. Snoke took it from her when she was captured, but he allowed her to burn it with Kylo’s body when she came for him.

It hurts now to look at the light, it’s as bright as a star. That’s what the fleet does; creates its own star as fuel _and_ munition. She can hardly separate the pain in her eyes from the battering on her senses from the energy surrounding her. Something in the Force is building, building, building. The dark and the light wind around each other, meld and break, slash and heal, offend and defend. 

Time slows.

The moment stretches, and she can hardly breathe. The room feels as if it’s alight, shining like the Nexus itself. But it’s also strangely dim; a veil of darkness falls over her eyes. Something pulls on her mind—Snoke—he is calling to her, gripping onto her, his voice in her head just incoherent rage. 

_REY,_ she makes out at last. His desperation is clear, he’s pulling, pulling—she feels a hand on her own, has to look down to check there is nothing there because the sensation is so vivid, his long, cool fingers dry against the sweat on her palms. 

_Don’t go away_ , he says, quite clearly. 

A disbelieving laugh bubbles up in her chest. The Force is shrieking around her, and his hand is so insistent—but he is the one leaving, he is going away. It feels like a hole is opening in her belly again, her guts trying to go with him. _“You are mine,”_ he told her once, never needing to say it again.

 _Mine, mine, mine,_ he chants now, his voice at her ear, in her mind, running through her veins. Her nose is bleeding, she feels it drip, drip down her face, and her tongue comes out to taste it. Even her blood is answering his call. Her skin twists itself into gooseflesh, hairs standing on end to get closer to him. 

_No_ , she tells him. 

He clutches tighter to her hand, and she gasps as his fingers grind her bones together. He yanks at her, dragging her to him. 

_NO_ , she cries out, calling the Force to her. Power surrounds her. She feels smothered by it. 

The darkness is warm and familiar and responds eagerly to her fear and pain. _Beloved,_ it whispers in Snoke’s soft voice. It coats her in the heat of angry blood and betrayed love.

No. No. This isn’t right. 

A bone snaps in her finger as she tries to pull away. Then another, and another. He grips even harder and the white heat of agony in her hand is indistinguishable from the hot light from the nexus. She looks down at her real hand; it’s purple and swollen, bulging in places as if someone were squeezing it, like it might burst from the pressure. She tries to wiggle her fingers, stomach turning over at the wrong-pain of the broken bones. The damage is real. 

Snoke heaves at her again and her whole body jolts in response. _REY!_ he calls.

She won’t go with him. _She won’t._ In her panic she throws power at him, but the dark energy only feeds him, and his pull begins to feel inexorable.

She looks around the room in desperation. The knights have both collapsed on the floor; one is clutching at her throat, gasping feebly. The image on the holo-screen still shows the moon glowing brilliantly, ready to expel the power it’s been forced to consume. On the other side of the feed, Falce has turned her back to the camera to watch the readouts on the viewscreen in front of her. Waiting, like everyone else, for what must happen.

A howling noise seems to fill the air, drowning out her gasping breaths. The inferno of darkness that is Snoke surrounds her. Her hand is squeezed in his, her shoulder aching as he pulls and pulls. He has no form, only roiling darkness, thick as black smoke and just as cloying in the lungs. She is moving towards him. She can’t—

Wait. 

There—something is there, at the corner of her eye. She dares a quick glance, still hopelessly trying to pull her hand away. In the Force beside her, something flickers, there and not-there at the same time. 

_He’s not here._ The words trickle slowly into her mind, one by one. _He’s not here, but you’re not alone._ The voice is warm and unhurried, echoing from everywhere and nowhere, yet as quiet as a whisper in her ear.

The voice is right. Snoke can only take her if she goes with him. She has a choice. It was always so, but before, she was alone and didn’t see it. She looks away from him, to the glimmer of power. Her arm drops to her side. The pressure is still heavy, her hand still screams with the pain of her broken bones and the mashed pulp Snoke is making of her flesh. By reflex, she absorbs the pain into herself, drawing power from it.

The little flicker of power gleams, a golden glow that reminds her of candlelight. It shouldn’t be visible in a room filled with the blinding blue-white pouring from the burning moon. Yet, somehow it’s all the brighter for being so small, no more than a smudge that disappears and reappears as she tries to focus on it, unable to hold it steady in her reality.

The veil between what is seen and unseen wavers. Dark and light twist together, Snoke no more than a shrieking mass she has the strength to turn from.

No time to consider. She reaches out to touch the power, finds her mangled hand sliding behind the veil, between the layers of the Force. It’s a new kind of pain, a teeth-gritting wrongness that intensifies as her skin is bathed in pure light, cleansing and merciless. Her human eyes see only a blur from the wrist down; her hand is indistinct, like looking through a pane of frosted transparisteel. With her Force senses she sees … radiance. An unwavering grace that turns its gaze on the undeserving, its compassion both terrible and wonderful. She isn’t meant for this, not worthy of such sanctification. The pure light side draws her in closer, as greedy for her as Snoke is. The balance is off, each a wound in the Force in their own way.

A hand takes hers gently, grounding her from panicked thoughts of infinite, dazzling light. The hand is large and warm, and it feels very human, like she is grabbing the living hand of someone standing in the room beside her. A comforting heat flows from it to her abused flesh, realigning bone, repairing torn ligaments, and neatly socketing her joints back into place. She cringes a little at the sensations, but it doesn’t hurt. As the pain drains away, the hand grasps hers more firmly and she can feel callouses on the palm. It holds her safe.

 _Don’t let go,_ the voice says. 

_I won’t,_ she promises. 

Snoke is beginning to recede now, a mass of limbs like the dry branches of a dead tree groaning in a high wind, reaching and straining. But as long as she holds the hand, he cannot take her. He roars in frustration, wailing her name, and she falls to her knees as he batters at her, stiff joints protesting, shoulders rounded, head bowed. Her back is to him, though, she kneels only to the hand, to the light that is her unexpected ally after all these years of estrangement.

The room is lit suddenly, overwhelmingly, by blue-white agony. Snoke’s power is trying to rip and tear at her; his long fingers are claws, swiping at her again and again, to grasp or to maim. She is screaming and her hand is cramping from holding on so hard, but the hand grips hers firmly and the light won’t let her go. Something shreds as Snoke snatches away a handful of her and then—

Silence. He is gone.

The Force steadies around her, and the light and the hand disappear. 

Her ears are ringing, and she stumbles up and over to the bed, barely noticing the knights lying on the floor, both very still. Hux is frowning in his unconscious state, his lips tight and thin. Blood drips from her nose onto the white sheets covering him. The drops bloom and spread. She reaches across him and grabs his good hand with her blessed one. Despite the touch of the light side—or maybe because of it—hers is shaking and she can hardly bring her fingers around to clasp his. She collapses over him, leaning onto the bed, and finds she is sobbing, tears falling into the blood.

“Armitage, wake up.” Her voice is somewhere between a cracked whisper and a sob. She repeats his name over and over again, like a prayer.

An unfamiliar sensation comes over her, a prickling at the back of her neck. The dark side and the light hover around her uncertainly, like hesitant sunlight stealing up over a hill at dawn, the warm pinks vying with the cool velvet cloak of night. She draws them together and pulls them over her and Hux like a shelter. The half-light and half-dark of the Force surround them, brushing over her skin, teasing at her hair, worrying over the blood and tears.

A breath. Another.

And oh—oh—finally, finally the light comes in. It’s dimmer than the blinding radiance from before, tempered by the darkness that swirls inside her. But it’s filling her for the first time in so long and she has missed it, has ached for it, has been empty without it. The light—it’s always been there, waiting beyond that dark veil, illuminating just enough so that she could walk on without losing her step, but always, always out of reach.

The light draws back when it reaches the dark pit at her centre—Snoke’s gift and curse. The two sides of the Force snap at each other in suspicion, fighting for dominance inside her. The light washes over the dark pit and the darkness within it churns in fury. The warmth of dawn begins to recede, driven out by cold moonlight.

“No,” she whimpers. “Don’t leave.” She needs the light, can’t do what she hopes to without it.

She touches Hux’s mind, sees that he exists only in the fragments of his dreams. In despair, she tries to gather all his pieces together as the light sputters. The light and dark won’t mix within her, won’t work together to help him. 

She gathers light from around her instead. The power is weaker this way, and it flows sluggishly; she is no longer used to the gentle direction it responds to. It’s not enough. She draws on the pit of darkness inside her and the dark rushes eagerly at her command, bending to her will in a way the light will never allow. 

_Armitage_. She breathes the mixture of power into his mind. He stirs a little. She needs more, from him and from herself. It takes her memories, and his, to rebuild him, but he begins to take shape. 

The light twists, bucking against the darkness she uses to fuel the careful work on his mind. Something else is needed. She reaches down into the pit of her power, gasping as remembered pain rushes over her, forgotten screams echo and a young Rey sobs alone. Somewhere, deep down, there must still be her old connection to the light side of the Force. The pit seems endless, full of oily power, and she is drowning in it as she seeks the bottom.

Her fingers blindly brush over something: a smooth stone. She hefts it in her hand, testing its weight. It’s her meditation stone from Ahch-To. She selected it at the small rocky beach on the island, thrusting her hand into the ice-cold water to grab it. Her smile had been triumphant and Luke’s lips had quirked up in one of his rare smiles in return. It was a constant companion to her early training in meditation and levitation. She spent hours holding it until the exact oblong shape and the texture of the rock were as familiar as her own skin. 

There—it even has the little chip from when she threw it against one of the huts in a rage over some frustration she can’t remember now. That had hurt, like she’d kicked a favourite pet and the bruise she made never faded. 

She draws it up and out of the pit, closing herself to the memories that grab at her as she surfaces. She settles herself down to the side of the black hole, cradling the rock in her palm, thumb rubbing over the sharp edges of the chip. Through the stone she can sense the light again, but the pull of darkness from the pit beside her is too strong for the light to linger. She will have to train anew to find a way to balance the two. Later.

Now, she coats her hands in darkness to protect herself, then concentrates on the stone, coaxing the light to penetrate it, heating it so that it flows back to its liquid state. Armitage never lacked fire, or the strength of hard rock, but it’s all she has. The stone’s roughness was smoothed down by the wash of waves over millennia—that must count for something.

She peers into Armitage’s mind. His outline is there, if uncertain, all his pieces piled up inside. The stone is lava in her hands, a bright pool holding the light side safely. Dark flows out from her scarred skin, cooling the outside of the liquid stone to create a mould. She pours him into it slowly, forming him again into himself. 

A wave of dizziness washes over her as she sets the hot stone in place inside him. It’s good work. His mind is whole—she thinks—and there is a residual glow around him in the Force. The light has done what it can through her, and the dark has aided with its raw power. She rests her head on his chest, listens to his heartbeat through thin skin and _hopes._

The room is growing dark. She feels scraped clean, all used up.

“Armitage,” she whispers. “Wake up.”

  


* * *

  


It’s dark outside, and the lights in the room are low. For a moment she is confused. _Armitage?_ Then she sees she’s in her own room, and Julion is at her bedside. He’s looking down at a datapad in his hand, and the way he’s slumped down in the chair indicates he has been sitting there for some time. When she moves her head he glances up.

“Mother,” he says quietly, almost whispering. His expression is concerned, but there is a light in his eyes, a fire she used to see in Hux when he was triumphant.

“Armitage?” she asks. Her head throbs dully, and her chest is tight.

“He’s sleeping well.” Julion smiles at her, and though she wants to ask more, to know if Hux woke up, he is already moving on. Surely he would tell her if that had happened.

“Mother, we did it. We did it. He’s gone.” He takes her hand, not the blessed one, and squeezes it. His is a little clammy, and she winces at the dampness against her skin. Everything feels rough on her senses, the weight of the blankets over her, the glow of the lamps in the room, his jubilation over the murder of her master.

Tears come to her eyes. She feels empty, lost. _Something is missing._ A piece of her went with him, the same as with Kylo.

Snoke is gone _._ She will never see him again, never wander the darkness with him, never feel the weight of his longing, never watch his sad eyes as he gives her the pain that makes her his. 

He is _gone_. 

“The knights—” she begins, thinking of the two still forms on the floor in Hux’s room.

A flicker of unease passes over Julion’s face. “We aren’t certain what happened to them. You were found collapsed over Father. They were dead.”

She closes her eyes, speaking half to herself. “Snoke took them. He tried to take me too. Almost…” Her hand—she flexes it under the covers. It feels normal, stiff joints protesting at the movement. 

“We suspected as much. That’s why we wanted you to come to the rally. The twins could have helped you.”

“Or been taken too.” She snaps her eyes open in time to see him flinch. “I don’t think they could have helped me anyway, not if they were fighting him too.” It was something she had to do alone, until it wasn’t. 

She can’t resist looking at her hand any longer, pulling it from under the covers to examine it, turning it this way and that. No unearthly glow emanates from it, no bruises swell dark and soft, nothing indicates it was crushed and then remade in a matter of seconds. It looks perfectly normal, as age spotted and scarred as ever, no sign of any power having affected it.

She cups her hand, resting her elbow on the bed, and imagines her palm filling with light. It comes to her easily, darkness suspended in it like bubbles of black oil in water. They cannot mix, but if she concentrates, they can be stable within their own domain, existing side by side.

“They didn’t say anything about having to fight him. Linas knew, of course—she said you overheard us talking and might have guessed?—so she was prepared. Taral didn’t know, and he’s somewhat shaken. He’s resting now.”

Rey lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. If he had taken her children with him… No, it didn’t happen. No reason to consider it or imagine what she would feel. “You could have warned me.”

Julion shakes his head. “No. You were too close to Snoke. He might have found out. No one knew the target except the three of us—Orelia, Linas and me. Not even the grand admiral. We trusted no one. We knew there was only one shot at this and we had to do it exactly right. Linas wasn’t supposed to know, but she has an unfortunate habit of reading everyone’s minds all the time.”

“Your father, did he know?” 

“No, no. He was too close to Snoke, too close to _you_ to see what needed to be done.”

A horrible thought occurs to her. “Did you _hurt_ your father so you could—”

Julion reels back. “No! How could you ever even _think_ that?” His upset rings true in the Force. “We were willing to wait until”—he shifts uncomfortably—“until we had an opportunity. It was just chance that it happened to be so soon. We’ve had this in mind for _years_ , Mother. We did it for you, to free you, so you wouldn’t have to live with that monster anymore.” 

_Snoke_. Her chest aches and she smells woodsmoke and rough wool, hears his quiet voice reading to her as she stares into the flames. She’s warm and safe, the darkness that surrounds them wrapping around her snugly. She was his, and he was hers. Now who is she, and where does she belong? 

He is gone, and she doesn’t have a home.

  


* * *

  


She wakes several times in the night. Rather predictably, she dreams of Snoke, of his desperate hand grabbing onto hers. Sometimes she allows herself to be pulled into death with him, exploding out into a billion tiny pieces of the Force, their atoms mingling together in the void. Once, she runs through a snowy forest, a large, warm hand pulling her along through the trees, the snap and hiss of a lightsaber humming behind her, though she never knew Snoke to wield one. 

Another time she is in his study, kneeling on the hard floor. She has been there for days and is shaking and wretched with fatigue. He stands in front of her, his face sorrowful at her continued disobedience. “Come, my dear,” he says and offers her his hand. Her fingers twitch and she is so close to reaching out to him, to giving in…

A groan, deep in her throat, wakes her. She turns over in bed, pulls the blankets more tightly around herself. 

In the next dream, they sit by the fire, hands clasped, and his thumb draws slow circles over the back of her hand. He draws her in close to lean against him—he’s so bony underneath his thick robes—and the Force washes over them. Their minds are joined, for once she has let him in and his quiet joy is so thick in her that her mind fuzzes with contentment. _Beloved,_ he whispers inside her thoughts. _Don’t go away._

She wakes with a choked sob and doesn’t know where she is. Blinded by tears, she reaches out, seeking the familiar blaze of him in the Force. She receives nothing but cool silence. The Force is quiet and still, as if it’s holding its breath. The light calmly flows around her, unafraid to touch her now. And the dark, her constant friend and dreaded companion; it clings to her as always. Its devotion, based on her unparalleled ability to channel it, is unchanged.

It strikes her that she is now the most powerful Force-user in the galaxy, heir to all Snoke’s teachings. She could become him, ageless and godlike in her power. He showed her once—well, gave her a glimpse, at least—what eternity truly is. It was something like when she touched the light, yet its opposite. The endless, stifling darkness from which she draws her power was beautiful in its horror.

The power of the dark side may be infinite, but lasers are the pure energy of light itself. And it seems eternity cannot triumph over light that can destroy worlds. 

  


* * *

  


Her head is throbbing when she wakes up properly in the morning, the feeling of a smooth stone warm in her hand. She reaches out to Hux again, but he is sleeping. Her whole body is a bruise, aching inside and out. A hot bath would be heaven. She presses the button at her bedside to call a droid to run one for her and to bring her some food.

Painfully she drags herself from the bed, joints creaking and popping, and staggers to the refresher. She avoids the mirror, not ready to see what waits in her reflection. The bath is perfect, soothing away the physical pain, at least, so she can examine the mental. Her eyes close and she sinks into a meditation, the old one that Luke taught her. She breathes slow and deep. 

_I stand between the candle and the flame._

Inside her mind, she looks down at the pit of her power. It surprises her that it’s unchanged, though why would it be? Even her work with the stone was done to the side of it, the pit’s place at her centre is unchallenged. A passing thought: Snoke might have taken the darkness with him; after all, this power was his gift. But no, it’s hers now. Something _is_ different, in that last moment he took a piece of her, and she feels ... less. Her power has not changed, but she has.

She is filled with a desire to see her children, Kylo’s children. They should be together now. Their master, their _monster,_ is dead. Her lips twitch as she tries to smile, but instead tears threaten to spill out. He is gone. Her children are safe, all of them. Her grandchildren and their children after them. He will never take a child again. She is happy. She is free. They all are. 

_I miss you._

  


* * *

  


It’s been a long time since she was in the rooms assigned to the taral. Kylo rarely slept there, and when he did, he was alone. Taral is lying in the bed, his sister sitting at his side. They are speaking quietly, but they look up as she hovers in the doorway, unsure of her welcome.

Taral appears exhausted and beaten down, while Taral’linas is sleek with satisfaction.

“Mother,” she says. “Julion said Snoke almost took you.”

Rey’s hand flexes at her side. Her joints are looser after the heat of the bath, and she clenches her hand into a fist easily. “Yes.”

“I didn’t anticipate that.” Taral’linas frowns. “You understand why we couldn’t tell you, don’t you?”

Rey nods. She doesn’t want to speak of this, but what else is there to talk about? “Anakin,” she says, moving forward to the bed to take his hand. “Are you all right?”

Taral’linas sniffs at this display of motherly care, but Taral’s eyes soften. He studies her. “I am ... diminished. As you are, I think. She is, too,”—indicating Taral’linas with a quirk of his brow—“though she won’t admit it.”

“Part of me is gone.” It feels like a confession, something that Snoke would wring out of her after hours of torment. He would push her harder and further until she would grasp at the darkness for relief. Then her reward would come.

Taral’linas laughs, a broken sound of jangled metal. “Of course he took something from us. When did he ever stop taking?” The red of her eyes gleams. “He left his taint behind too. Can’t you feel his marks all over you still?”

Taral’linas is very pale, and the Force tumbles around her in rough-edged pieces. She is swollen with dark rage, and the light stays away.

“I’ve been able to touch the light again,” Rey says. Tears threaten. “It’s—”

“Mother.” Orelia is at the door. She comes into the room. “I’m glad you are awake. And well?” Cool eyes examine her face. 

Rey manages a small smile, feeling a little as if their roles are reversed and her daughter is instead her mother, fussing over her. “Yes.” 

“Good.” Orelia smiles with relief. “We never intended that you be hurt, any of you.” Her glance sweeps over her half-brother and sister. “Father is awake. He’s asking for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	9. Chapter 9

Hux is propped up in his bed, head leaning heavy on the pillow. His face is pale and drawn, but his eyes are open, and they sharpen when he sees her.

“Rey,” he says, quite clearly.

“Armitage?” She hurries over to him and takes his right hand, which was his good one. To her surprise, he lifts his left hand, the closer one to her, and touches her cheek. “How are you?”

“Better.” He smiles, and both corners of his mouth lift.

It’s so good to hear his voice, his real voice. She had hoped... Now she hardly knows what to say.

“Mother,” Orelia says. “A moment?”

Rey allows herself to be drawn out into the hallway, followed by a solemn-faced young doctor. 

The doctor consults her datapad. “This sort of recovery after a second major stroke is quite unprecedented.” She pauses, then continues delicately, “I understand you were found with him yesterday, Empress. Were you able to affect him with the Force, perhaps?”

Rey blinks, then sends a pointed look to Orelia. Her power is not discussed with outsiders to the family. 

Her hand involuntarily tightens into a fist again. A hand in the light ... the warm press of fingers on hers ... liquid stone shining in her palm. “I—I don’t know,” she lies. “ I remember telling him to wake up. I…” She shakes her head. 

The doctor and Orelia exchange a meaningful glance. “Mother, I’d like it if you would let the doctor examine you. Just to make sure all is well.”

Rey waves a hand. “Later.” She turns to go back to into the room, but Orelia puts a hand on her arm and motions the doctor away. 

When they‘re alone, Orelia leans closer to Rey and speaks in a low voice. “We haven’t told him. About Snoke. Or your collapse, or the knights. He knows he had another stroke, and he asked me about the Nexus test. I told him it went well.” She takes a breath. “I thought you might want to tell him. It seemed right. Mother, we ... we don’t know if this good spell will last. The doctors aren’t sure what happened. Another stroke could still come at any time. I want you to be prepared.”

Rey smiles, and for the first time in many years, excitement is blooming inside her. She can stay with Hux as long as she wants. No one can stop her, no one is waiting for her, impatient and jealous. “I will tell him, thank you,” she says, and pats Orelia’s shoulder.

“Something’s happened,” Hux says when she comes back and sinks down into the chair beside him.

Her lips twitch. “Well, you seem to have come back from the dead.”

“There’s more. Tell me.”

“Snoke is dead.”

His eyes widen and he breathes out sharply. “Dead. How?”

“Your Nexus weapon. Our children turned it on him. He’s gone.” Her hands are trembling in her lap, her whole body is trembling, in fact. It feels good to say these things out loud, but she can’t help the reflexive search of the Force for signs of Snoke hearing her. The energy flows smoothly around her though, and there is no sign of his influence.

Hux looks down and his fingers pluck at the buttons on his night shirt. “This is momentous news indeed.” He glances back at her. “Show me what happened?”

It’s her turn to look away. “Not ... not now. It’s too—”

He nods in understanding. “Snoke dead, after all these years. This is much to take in.” He is silent as he digests the information, and she can practically hear his mind turning over all the implications, the waves of effect that will ripple off into the distance from this one event. She resists the urge to follow his train of thought, but she does wonder how he feels privately. He and Snoke had a good working relationship, and he owes his current position to him. 

His first question is eminently practical, however. “Is there anyone who might take his place? An apprentice waiting in the wings?

Her laugh is humourless. “Me.”

He takes her seriously. “And? Will you?”

She stands up and goes to the window, looking out at the mid-morning sun glinting off the skyscrapers. “No.”

“The Knights?”

“They have a master. My children can decide what to do with the knights.” She has no interest in involving herself in the politics of the order. Darth Vader is venerated by the knights for his power and betrayal of the light. The story taught in the Temple of Ren is that the light was his weakness in the end, that it destroyed him. Luke told it differently, and she believed him. Perhaps the knights can find some balance between the light and dark. Many things are possible in the Force.

“Rey,” he says softly. 

Her back is to him as she stares out, but she doesn’t turn right away. When she does, his face is open with concern. 

“Come, sit with me?” he invites, patting the bed beside him.

She climbs the little stool on the other side of the bed and slides over to sit beside him, their shoulders and hips touching. 

“Can I hold you?” he asks.

She buries her face in his shoulder, bony and shrunken as it is. His arms encircle her and he projects love and care.

She takes a shuddering breath. “He’s gone.” They did this once before, except then, he had been heartbroken too.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into her hair. 

It hurts. Everything is all wound up in knots inside her. Love, hate, comfort, fear. What is hers, and what was given to her to bear?

“I was jealous of him, you know,” he says. “That he had you to himself for all those years. You understood each other in a way we never could.”

“I knew,” she whispers. 

He sighs. “Of course. You will miss him, I’m sure.”

“He tried to take me with him,” she tells him. “The light—Armitage, the light, I can feel it again!—it helped me. Gave me something to hold onto when he was trying to pull me away.”

His arms tighten around her. “I’m glad.” He drops a kiss on her forehead. “Is that how you were able to bring me back? With the light?”

She smooths her hand down his side, feeling every rib. “Something like that. I just wanted you to wake up.”

“I did.”

  


* * *

  


That night there is a dinner for the whole family to celebrate Hux’s return to health, and more quietly, the death of Snoke. Rey again wears the grey robe that she wore to the opera a few days earlier. When looking through her closet to choose her outfit, she had been hit by an unexpected wave of sadness at the thought of her things left behind at Snoke’s fortress. She mourns a favourite pair of shoes for several minutes, thinking how silly she is being, but unable to stop herself.

Hux takes his place at the head of the table, while Rey is at the foot. For the first time since Rey went to live with Snoke, the whole family is together, children and grandchildren, Kylo the only one lost to them. The mood is upbeat, and conversation flows freely. Later there will be a reception for Empire Day, and the prospective bridegrooms for Verina will be present. 

Orelia sits at Rey’s right hand. They discuss again the merits of the various candidates. Orelia glances at Verina and lowers her voice. “Cosinga Palpatine is here tonight to represent his family. I’m worried that he’ll be a distraction.”

Rey considers. “You must learn to trust her judgment. Perhaps his charms will fade in the presence of new and interesting prospects.” She pauses. Things have changed; former concerns about Force-sensitivity are no longer valid. “Maybe you should add him to the list, as long as she gives the others a fair chance.” She eyes Verina, who is smiling at her younger cousins as they talk excitedly to her. “Love could be a factor in the selection, too.”

Orelia nods slowly. “Things have changed,” she says, echoing Rey’s thought. “It will take some time for us all to adjust our thinking. No need to make hasty decisions now.” 

The meal is drawing to a close when Taral’linas stands abruptly and the table falls silent. She glances down to her twin at her right, then turns her head to look at Rey. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she announces without preamble.

Silence.

“Going where?” Hux asks mildly.

She doesn’t look away from Rey, those red eyes boring into hers. “Away. I won’t be coming back for a while. If ever.” Her voice is especially flat and metallic. 

“Linas—” Taral starts, touching her arm.

She shakes him off. “I don’t claim that title anymore. I’m done with all that.”

“Skye, then—”

Her chair scrapes loudly across the stone floor as she backs away from the table. “That’s not who I am.”

“Do you have a new, preferred form of address? It’s rather difficult to discuss this with someone who has no name.” Hux’s tone is bland, but his eyes have narrowed.

“There is no discussion. I am informing you, out of courtesy and as my last duty as Taral’linas. There’s a whole tower of knights who would cut off their right arm”—she flexes her cybernetic hand and grins, her mouth a black hole—“for the chance to be bored shitless standing around behind royalty. I’m done.”

“I would be pleased to sit down with you and talk about this,” Orelia says. “No need to leave so soon. Stay awhile. You’re part of this family, we don’t want you to cast yourself out.”

Taral’linas ignores her and looks again to Rey. “Will you stop me?”

Rey is frozen. All she can see is her skinny ten-year-old daughter walking out across a docking pad to a shuttle. Clad all in black, long hair pulled into a tight braid. She looked back once, her face pinched with fear, and Rey had thought she might die from the agony.

Kylo would go to his daughter now, wrap his arms around her until she collapsed into him and let him carry everything for her. Snoke would have frowned at her audacity and made sure she never forgot her place again. Rey’s eyes dart to Hux—he looks vaguely amused, but mostly annoyed. This is outside his planning and therefore an irritation. He would try to stop Taral’linas, she is sure of it. If it comes to it, no one can stop her except for Rey. Perhaps that’s why the question is directed at her—not in her role as a parent, but as the most powerful person in the room.

At Rey’s silence, Taral’linas’s face falls, and only then does she see the hope that had been written there. “I thought you, at least, would understand,” Taral’linas says, and turns to go.

 _I do. I understand_ , Rey whispers, meaning it only for Taral’linas, but it echoes through all the minds in the room. She puts her love into the word, and her heartbreak. 

Taral’linas looks at her and the red pupils of her eyes expand to chase away the blackness. They glow brighter for a moment, then dim. The whir of servos and the light tread of her boots on the stone floor are the only sounds as she walks away.

  


* * *

  


Rey shows her face briefly at the reception alongside Hux, but he is exhausted and they soon make their excuses. To his great frustration, he still needs the hoverchair to get around, finding both standing and walking too difficult. 

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” he is saying as they make their way back to the residential wing, Taral pacing along behind them. “How did Snoke not predict this? Wouldn’t the Force have warned him?”

“For all his power,” Taral answers, “Snoke didn’t have much talent for seeing the future. He was more in touch with the living Force, what’s happening here and now.”

“The Force warned me not to tell him,” Rey says slowly. “He was an imbalance in the Force itself; a wound. It took action to purge itself.”

Hux frowns. “If the Force could take such an action, the logical conclusion would be that your children were born to do this, that you were given the Force to bring you in contact with him so that you could have those children, that you were found by Kylo to start the chain—no, there was the droid before that—or when you were left on Jakku…” he trails off. “Does the Force control our destiny in that way?”

Rey shakes her head. “That’s not my understanding. It’s much more chaotic than that. But it takes the pieces that it’s been given and nudges them in different directions than they might have taken. Multiple opportunities were available to stop Snoke. This is just the one that succeeded.”

The day she and Luke went to face him was another chance. They had been confident in their abilities and certain of success. The Force had been with them, but therein lay the problem. Luke had never forgiven himself, or Kylo, for what happened to the new generation of Jedi he was training. Guilt and rage festered deep within him, an open window for the darkness to creep through. Snoke had seen it immediately, the dark side tainting Luke’s attacks, allowing him easy access to Luke’s power. It had been over quickly, shockingly quickly. If Luke had been able to truly forgive, to let go entirely of his hatred, who can say what the outcome would have been?

They have reached Rey’s door. Hux takes her hand. “Come to me when you’re ready,” he says. 

She feels her cheeks going red, is very aware of Taral giving them generous space while studiously gazing down the corridor away from her. She nods once, and Hux’s eyes light with amusement as he looks at her pink cheeks. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he says with a smile, his eyes soft and warm. “Don’t be long.”

  


* * *

  


It’s a comfort to be held again, to have gentle hands stroke down her back, to feel the warmth of another person at her side. She falls asleep easily, lulled by the sound of his breaths and his steady heartbeat under her hand.

That night she dreams of lava flowing in glowing rivers. Snoke took her and a group of knights to Mustafar once, the planet where Jedi go to die. They stayed at Darth Vader’s fortress, where he came to heal and, if he was anything like his grandson, to brood. He built it under Palpatine’s orders, standing watch over the fires that burned his hopes to ash. It was doubly a prison. Any Jedi who escaped Order 66 was brought there, hundreds of them over the years, hunted and caged. It had been Vader’s task to learn from them of other rogue Jedi, and he took his duty seriously indeed. 

The purpose of the visit was a lesson in the eradication of a truth that existed for thousands of years. How within the span of a generation, truth can change to stories, stories to rumours, rumours to myth and myth to legend. _“Only the Force is eternal, whether there are those who can touch it or not,”_ Snoke told them. _“Everything else eventually turns to dust.”_

The dark side lay thick over the planet, despite the fiery light of the molten rock. The prison reminded her of the building squatting behind Snoke’s fortress, the walls of both places imprinted with the horrors carried out there. 

She wakes with the smell of sulfur in her nose. Hux is snoring gently beside her and doesn’t stir when she turns over and away from him. Her hand is empty. She opens and closes it, the ghost of her stone an absent weight. Something is missing. She touches Hux’s mind, traces the hard stone shell that contains him. A piece of her is holding him together. She hadn’t considered what that might mean when she remade him. 

Sleep comes slowly as she tosses and turns in the wide bed. When it does come, she dreams of a shuttle taking flight, of Kylo’s face set with cold determination, despair in his eyes. A hot sun dazzles her and a huge, fleshy hand holds hers. _“Quiet, girl.”_

She’s being left behind. She’s always been left behind. 

In the morning, Taral’linas is gone. 

  


* * *

  


Hux has the decency to wait until after breakfast to take his datapad in hand and begin to catch up on everything he missed. She reads a book on her own datapad for an hour or so, then decides to go for a walk in the garden. Hux declines the invitation to join her, saying he’s been aired quite enough over the past while, thank you very much.

She wanders between the flower beds and admires the blooms on the trees. It’s always easier to touch the light around living things, and she spends some time on the bench in meditation, practicing letting the light flow through her, soothing the dark with assurances she will not forsake it.

Hux is frowning down at the screen and tapping his fingers on the armrest of his hoverchair when she returns.

“What’s this, Rey?” he asks, handing her the pad.

The headline reads: _EMPRESS REY SPOTTED IN INTIMATE CHAT WITH RESISTANCE FRIEND_. The holo underneath shows her sitting close to Kaydel Ko Mitaka. Rey looks close to tears and Kaydel has her hand over her mouth. The holo is captioned: _“Empress Rey gets cosy with old friend after returning to Coruscant after twenty-year absence.”_

She reads the first few lines:

_Empress Rey appeared this morning at a charity brunch hosted by Alle Tonith, wife of IGBC Chairman Nie Hill, to raise funds for refugees from the Black Sun incursion on Nar Haaska. The empress was elegant in a vintage early Empire robe…_

Rey skips the next few lines describing her outfit and the outfits of her companions.

_The empress was also spotted in the royal box at the opera last week, accompanied by family. It has been some twenty years since she last appeared in public on Coruscant._

_Sightings over the years have been reported on Imperial ships and on planets from Belkadan to Kinooine and everywhere in between. We can only speculate that her return was precipitated by the mystery illness from which Emperor Hux is suffering, rumoured to be a serious stroke._

_The empress was greeted warmly by courtiers and society notables alike, but kept her conversations short and avoided discussing the emperor’s health._

_It was most intriguing to see her spend several minutes in intimate conversation with wife of retired grand admiral Dopheld Mitaka, Kaydel Ko Mitaka. The two women have been rarely seen together, but it is a matter of record that they were both members of the Resistance terrorist group during the First Order-New Republic war, under the leadership of the late General Leia Organa._

_Onlookers described the conversation between Ko Mitaka and the empress as “intense,” with Empress Rey whispering into her companion’s ear and both women appearing upset._

_We are left with many questions. What exactly is the emperor’s state of health? Why did Empress Rey return after so many years, and where has she been? What did she discuss with her former ally that was so upsetting?_

_Join in the comments below with your thoughts and theories!_

The article is illustrated with several more images: Rey arriving with Orelia, Lady Sindian and Verina, and at least five more of her speaking with Kaydel.

Wordlessly, she hands the pad back to Hux. His eyes are cold and his mouth tight with disapproval. She raises her eyebrows and waits.

“Do you see how this looks?” Hux demands. 

Her eyes narrow. “I see gossip and speculation.”

Hux’s fist tightens around the datapad and he waves it at her. “What will our enemies make of this? Empress Rey returning after a very extended, unexplained absence only to fraternize openly with a known terrorist.”

“Kaydel Ko Mitaka is at least eighty-five years old. She’s no more a terrorist than I am.” Rey speaks slowly, as if to a child. This is how they always fought; icy displeasure on his side, sarcasm and rage on hers. 

“It doesn’t matter. To see you apparently conspiring while the emperor is ill is enough. We can’t afford this right now, Rey. Not while the negotiations with the Hutts are at such a delicate point.”

Rey goes on the attack. “Isn’t it enough that you kept us from being friends when we were younger? When I could have used a friend who understood something of what I was going through?” 

The dark side is responding to her anger, coiling around her in thick ropes, squeezing her chest so it’s hard to breathe without inhaling darkness.

“It was for the good of the Empire. And for you, too. You were always so upset with any reminder of before.” Hux is at his most hateful now, all controlling patrician.

“No,” she says. “I won’t allow this. Not anymore.” Her vision darkens there is so much power around her, and her eyes burn. They are gold again, she is certain. She turns to go before she does something to hurt him.

Hux slams the datapad onto the arm of his chair. “Is that how you’re going to resolve this situation? By running away again?”

She stops. Turns back. Advances on him.

A flick of her finger and the window shatters behind him, transparisteel shards called inward, only to hang suspended in the air. Sunlight gleams through a fine dust of powdered metal and refracts through the crystalline structure of the broken pieces, painting a rainbow of dotted light on Hux’s face. It takes a little concentration to hold everything still, just enough so her power won’t escape her control and act only as a weapon of her fury.

She leans over him, gripping onto the arm of his chair, barely noticing that the door behind her opens and two knights run in to investigate the noise. Hux waves them back outside and the door closes.

He had flinched when the window broke and now watches her, wary. 

“I never ran away from you,” she hisses, “despite all you did to push me away. I would have stayed with you until the end.”

He has gone very pale, but he meets her eyes. “You left me,” he croaks. “I was alone, and you had _him._ ”

She sucks in a breath and straightens. Perhaps it’s time for truth. The broken window drags lightly at her mind, like she’s holding an unbalanced load in her arms and doesn’t want it to drop. Her eyes fall away from his and she fingers the embroidery at her sleeve. “I made a deal. That’s how he worked, always trading this for that, that for this. He got the best of it, of course.” 

“What was this deal,” he whispers.

“My children got five more years of childhood before he took them.” Five years of alternating between wanting to love them so much they would have something to hold onto in the dark, and fearing that if they were too used to love, they would never be able to stand it there. “I agreed I would go to him when Mari was grown and I was no longer needed here.”

He makes a small sound and she dares a glance at him. His eyes are wet and his mouth trembles. “ _I_ needed you,” he says. 

“You certainly gave the impression that you would be quite content if I left.” She tries to keep her tone brisk, matter-of-fact, but inside her, the pain of his coldness over the years is still raw.

He reaches out for her. “No, never. I missed you every day.”

“You already told me that you were glad I was gone,” she reminds him bitterly, drawing back from his grasping hand.

He has the grace to look guilty. “It was easier, yes, but I missed you. Why didn’t you tell me about this deal?”

She looks at the broken window she is holding in the air, and wonders if it would be possible to put it back together with the Force. Instead, she concentrates on lowering the pieces to the floor in a gentle shower. They clink quietly against each other as they fall to their fate and she gathers them in a neat pile. Warm air flows in from outside. It smells of the city, and the life in the garden below them. 

“I was ashamed,” she admits finally. “I didn’t want anyone to know.” Her throat closes as she remembers weeping into Snoke’s shoulder as he stroked her hair. 

_Disgusting._

  


* * *

  


Days pass unremarkably. She continues to sleep in Hux’s bed, but during the day he is closeted once again in meetings and glued to his datapad. The regency is still in place for now, but Hux has taken back almost all of his former duties, and Orelia defers to him. It’s as it was before, after Kylo was gone. 

She spends most of her time alone, much of it resting in her room. Everything tires her lately. Her children make the effort to keep her company when they can, but she finds she has little to say when they are together. It shouldn’t matter; she is used to being alone or sitting in silence with Snoke, the hours lost to the Force. 

It shouldn’t matter, but it does.

All is quiet in the Force, but it has fundamentally changed since Snoke’s death. She has never known it without his influence a dense weight on the scales, tipping everything towards the dark. The Force seems wary, a mantled bird trying to soothe itself now a threat has passed, its feathers only just beginning to settle back into place.

Taral approaches her one morning, asking if she would go to the temple with him to speak with the master of Ren. “I’d like to talk with her about changing things now that Snoke is gone. It would help if you were there,” he tells her.

She doubts that her voice carries much authority. Those that knew her as a knight, rather than as an empress, are dead or long retired. This is the third master of Ren since Kylo gave up the position. She counts her time in the knights as a failure, but her name is still in the annals: Lady Rey Ren. Former name, Rey. No family name. Species: human. Birthdate: unknown. Planet of origin: unknown. Parents: unknown. No one.

“Have you heard from your sister?” she asks Taral in the shuttle.

He shakes his head sadly, running his gloved fingers over the metal banding on his helmet in his lap.

“You could leave, too,” she offers. “If that’s what you want, I won’t stop you, Anakin.”

He looks up when she says his old name, and smiles slightly. “I’m not certain yet. I’d like the chance to make things better for Force-users. Snoke’s way was wrong.” He says this firmly, but without emotion. “The Jedi were wrong, too, maybe. It’s hard to say. I hope Master Ren will be willing to work with me.”

“And if she won’t?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

The meeting with the master of the Knights of Ren and her senior council is more formal than Rey was expecting. They meet in the tower of the temple, in the old council room where the Jedi masters sat. Rey has only been in the room once or twice before, and her eyes are drawn to the view outside the large windows, the heart of Coruscant spreading out below them. 

They sit around a heavy table of matte black durasteel. The weight and dark colour seem to draw in the light, darkening the room despite the bright midday sun outside. Out of courtesy, everyone takes their masks off. Their faces, even those with darker skin tones, are a washed-out grey from lack of light, both physical and spiritual. Master Ren’s warm olive skin is sallow with fatigue, and her eyes are deeply shadowed. 

Rey sits in silence while Taral speaks, and as the others argue back and forth over the merits of his ideas. Multiple undercurrents in the Force pull this way or that. Some in the council are interested in Taral’s proposals of seeking a middle way, others are satisfied with how things are now. A few are hostile. The master of Ren herself is cool to Taral, but she does listen both to him and to the discussion amongst her council.

“What do you say, Empress?” the master asks her now.

Rey’s tongue is heavy in her mouth. Here especially, where the dark side pulses in time with the heartbeats of so many of its servants, she fears Snoke’s retribution. She gathers her courage.

“I was trained by the last Jedi, Luke Skywalker,” she begins. “He taught me how to touch the light and—” 

Her throat closes. She takes a breath. Two. 

“We trained together for six years, all through the war. At the end, when it was clear the New Republic was all but finished, Master Luke and I went together to defeat Snoke. We lost.” The faces in the room are suitably grave. The fight between the last Jedi and Snoke is almost as legendary as Luke himself is now. 

Her gaze travels around the table, meeting the eyes of each person. “Everyone here was trained by Master Snoke himself. You know his methods. ‘Through pain comes power.’” She can almost hear him say the words, his soft voice as he reminds her again and again. 

“His training was brutal, if effective. He was stronger in the Force than anyone else alive, there is no disputing that. But he was a cruel master.” She raises her voice slightly in challenge. “Is there anyone here who would like to revisit that training from the beginning, learn all his lessons over again?”

A woman mutters under her breath. Master Ren’s face is thoughtful.

“Would any of you have liked to hand over your child to him to be trained?” Taral stiffens in his seat beside her, and one or two people recoil. The face of a man sitting opposite her creases with pain. “Luke Skywalker was a good teacher. He didn’t make things easy; he challenged me every day. But I would _willingly_ go through those days again. Pain is _not_ the only path to power.” 

“The last Jedi was weak,” the woman who muttered before objects. “He failed to defeat Master Snoke.”

“You’re right. He couldn’t defeat Snoke. But he was a powerful Force-user, strong enough to bring down Darth Vader.” This statement is close to heresy in the temple, and murmurs break out around the room. The mood is turning against her.

Master Ren holds up a hand, and the silence is immediate. “Many stories are told about the last Jedi and the last Sith. We _will_ give respect to our empress and fellow knight, apprentice to the last Jedi and friend to Leia Skywalker. Truth is a three-edged blade, after all; Master Snoke’s truths as edged as any.” 

Rey doesn’t know Master Ren well, only that she must be powerful, and ruthless, to have attained her position. She can add to the list thoughtful, measured, commanding—and perhaps more likely to question Snoke’s dogma than she would have dared hope.

She bows her head in acknowledgement as Master Ren gestures for her to continue, pausing a moment to watch the faces around her. “I’m sure you have all felt the shift in the Force now that Master Snoke is gone. Since he died, I’ve been able to touch the light again, though the dark is still with me. The Jedi were wrong to fear the dark side. It was their downfall, and yes, that includes Luke Skywalker. Yet Snoke’s fear of the light was just as harmful; he was a blight on the Force.”

It’s a risk, but—taking a deep breath, she projects her memories to everyone in the room, showing them how the Force warned her to be silent, the light and dark whispering together. The master’s lips are parted, and she is frowning. 

Truth is required once again, even if Rey wants to cling jealously to her memory of that warm hand. But she shares it all. Snoke’s desperate pull. The pain of her broken fingers. The voice that told her she wasn’t alone, and the strength of the hand that held hers in that pure light.

The woman who questioned her is quietly weeping by the time Rey lets the memory fade out, stopping before the moments where she healed Hux. That was something just for them, though she hasn’t shared it with him yet. The master rubs at her forehead and her second in command, a younger man with ivory skin and jet black hair swept into a long ponytail, leans close to her and whispers something in her ear.

Rey stands, and puts her hand on Taral’s broad shoulder. The words come easily, without conscious thought. “I’m not asking you to abandon the dark side. It’s our ally and the source of our power. The Knights of Ren should go on. Force-sensitives need a place to train safely, with others like them. The Empire needs you all. But I am asking you to let the light in, too. To end the suffering of children, right now. There is another way and I know you can find it if you work together.” 

She is trembling and her knees are weak. The temple is full of darkness, but the tower where she stands is reaching up to the sun. She calls the light and it rushes to her, flowing over her skin like liquid gold. The dark side weaves through it, but it’s still brilliant enough to glow. The light spreads to all corners of the room as she breathes more power into it, piercing the veil of darkness that hangs like a shroud over them. 

It feels like a blessing.

As she and Taral cross the launch pad on the walk out to the shuttle, he stops unexpectedly. She looks up at him in question. Slowly, carefully, he pulls her into a hug, his long arms tight around her shoulders. Her head rests on his chest and she can hear his heartbeat under her ear. 

“Thank you,” he says. 

  


* * *

  


Hux is sitting at his desk scrolling through messages on his datapad when she wanders in after her return from the temple. She’s exhausted, but wants to share her sense of victory for speaking up, almost giddy for daring to bring the light into the seat of darkness and for openly speaking against Snoke. It may have been a futile effort; any changes will be slow to come anyway. 

Hux smiles at her absently as she stands in the doorway, then another notification draws his attention back to his work. He is still pale and drawn; the skin on his face waxy and ashen, his shoulders slumped as he hunches over his desk, too thin as always.

She sighs and walks over to him. “Did you have lunch yet?”

“Must have forgotten,” he mutters, his eyes rapidly scanning over the text in front of him.

She wrangles the datapad out of his grasp. “Come eat with me.”

He grumbles, but she grabs hold of his hoverchair and has him out the door and in the dining room before he can make more than a cursory protest.

Over lunch, she tells him about her trip to the temple. She explains a little about the hand from the light side, but it seems the wrong time to show him, and he doesn’t ask. He listens carefully and is interested in the different directions she thinks the Knights of Ren could take without Snoke setting their way. It’s good to speak with him again like this. They so rarely had.

“We should do something together,” she says impulsively. “Go somewhere. Just the two of us.”

Hux takes a sip of his tea and clears his throat. “There is a gala tomorrow evening. I’d like it if you would attend with me.” He runs a finger up and down over the handle of his teacup, half looking away from her.

After the incident over the news article—which hasn’t been mentioned again—Hux is wary of her. Rightfully so, she has to acknowledge, as irritation rises at the thought of standing around for hours in a press of people she has no desire to speak with. 

“It would be helpful, for our public image, if you were seen more often, now you are living here again,” he continues. “A show of unity between us would—”

“No,” she cuts in. She is a little surprised at her own certainty, that she won’t do those things anymore. Not even for him. “I never asked to be in this position. It was Snoke’s idea. I’ve had enough of living the life he wanted for me.”

Hux looks a bit shifty. 

“What?” she asks.

“It wasn’t … _strictly_ Snoke’s idea.”

Is Hux blushing?

“He—” At her penetrating glare, he straightens. “He mentioned to me that you were having difficulties with your duties as a knight. In a subsequent conversation I brought up the need for me to marry and have heirs. He saw the wisdom in a reconciliation between the Resistance and the First Order. Your unconventional origins were inspiring to the people. It all came together quite quickly.” At her raised eyebrows he huffs. “I _told_ you I was smitten the first time we met.”

“Smitten. Yes, you said.” She can hear the scepticism in her own voice. It did make sense, that Snoke was parroting Hux’s words when he talked of the scavenger girl raised to the exalted position of empress and how the people would love her and, by extension, the First Order Empire. Hux was always the master of propaganda and manipulating others to do his will; it seemed even Snoke wasn’t immune to his wiles.

Hux reaches for her hand. His is cool and dry, and his slim fingers remind her powerfully of Snoke for a moment, so much that she almost snatches her hand away in terrified revulsion. Hux smiles into her eyes, not noticing her response. “I followed your progress in the Resistance over the years. The girl who beat Kylo Ren into the ground fascinated me. You were greatly feared among the stormtroopers; did you know that? I have to admit I watched some of the holos that were taken on the battlefield. Multiple times.” He laughs a little self-consciously. “Purely for strategic purposes, of course. I was enormously anticipating meeting you at that reception for the knights; do you remember it?”

“You embarrassed Kylo by asking if I was the one who scarred him.”

Hux laughs outright at that. “I’d forgotten. His ego could always use a little deflation. Anyway, you were so lovely I could hardly speak. Afterwards, I spent quite a bit of time thinking how I could subtly get you assigned to my personal guard.”

She tries to be amused at the story, and imagines herself as just one of the knights who stood outside his door when he worked or slept. Or standing at the back of another woman who was empress. It’s an unsettling thought. It doesn’t distract from her distaste for the role that was forced on her however, no matter whose idea it was.

Kylo asked for her too, she remembers. She never considered herself as someone who men would want as a prize, would fight for. It must have been for her power; she was utterly unremarkable without it. “You took your time for someone who was ‘smitten,’” she says dryly. In the first two years they didn’t have a conversation that went beyond pleasantries.

Hux sighs. “There was a wall around you. You were wrapped in silence. I was afraid.” Of what, he doesn’t say. Of not being able to break through the wall to see who she was behind it? Or that if he did, he would find that there was nothing there? 

Silence. That’s what she needs again. The long years with only the desert wind for company and the longer years where she wandered the darkness. Not alone, but close enough. She had thought she might die of loneliness once; now she sees there is nothing to fear in it. That clenching pain in her chest can be left behind, blown away into the emptiness. Something is missing inside her, and moreover, what was left is draining away, too. The things that used to matter no longer have a hold.

 _Come away with me, Armitage._ She doesn’t mean to put her power into the words, or maybe she does.

He flinches, but his mind was always too strong for such power to influence him. It’s even stronger since she reconstructed him, the shell of her stone acting as a shield against her, ironically. Is that little chip that was in the stone a part of him too now? Has she given him a flaw, a weakness?

He takes a deep breath, and squares his shoulders. His mind firms, but she can feel his legs shaking under the table, and he is sick with dread. “I need to tell you something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the first scene in this chapter is an entirely gratuitous sex scene and if you wish to skip straight to scene two, you won't miss anything important.

As Hux slid into Rey, Kylo’s mouth was on him, that wicked tongue lapping at his most sensitive area and darting inward to open him up. It was followed by Kylo’s fingers, long and blunt tipped, stretching Hux and stroking him inside until he shuddered. Kylo wrapped their minds together in the Force, not too tightly—Hux found that disorienting—just a loose link to magnify their pleasure as it echoed between them. Moving in and out of the welcoming softness of Rey, as Kylo’s heavy hardness dragged against the nerves inside him, filling and being filled at the same time and all their joy swirling together…

“This is what you have to tell me?” Rey interrupts the memory that Hux is sharing.

His look of surprise as his eyes pop open is almost comical. They’re sitting in her room for a change. It was late evening before he found the time to sit with her, and she can see he is drooping with weariness in his hoverchair. He’d insisted that he wanted to show her this and that it was better done in her room. She has a sneaking suspicion that he expects to be thrown out after, that he fears this is the end of them.

He recovers quickly enough, however. “I thought you might enjoy remembering this?”

It’s unlike him to be so indirect. He’s trying to soften the blow with memories of their love. She takes his hand. It’s damp and trembling.

“We can do this another day,” she offers, wishing he would agree. Now that he seemingly isn’t close to death anymore, there’s no reason for him to continue his confessions. They’re just a burden, a weight shifted from the dying to the living. Why should a dying man go lightly on his way into the void, leaving behind his grieving friends and family to hold his guilt and evil deeds? It’s not fair.

“No.” The curl of his lips is familiar. It’s difficult to sway him once he makes up his mind. He always used to accuse Kylo of being a sulker, but Hux is just as bad. “This is important. It’s all part of it.”

“Really.” Her tone is sceptical, but she settles back in her chair and puts her hands in her lap. Closing her eyes, she seeks his mind again, and allows herself to be pulled back in.

Hux loved his wide high bed. He’d ordered it as soon as the palace construction was underway, not long after he was declared emperor. Kylo had been a thorn in his side then, full of barely suppressed jealousy and rage. He paced at Hux’s back like a predator; sometimes the hair on the back of Hux’s neck prickled in warning at the fierce gaze on him. Hux was a tall man, so he made certain the bed was extra long, very much not thinking about the slightly taller and far more muscular body of his protector holding him down on it while he cried out in fear and need.

Shameful fantasies aside, he enjoyed being able to stretch out on his bed with room to spare. The other trappings of his power were satisfying too, of course—not least that he had access to Kylo’s power while warily holding his leash—but having this huge, ridiculous bed was a stark contrast to the narrow cots he’d slept in for most of his life. Every night he could see that his whole situation had changed, not just publicly where everyone had to bow and call him “Your Highness,” but in the quiet of his room, he was a king, too.

Later, they found that there was plenty of room for the three of them, and he wondered, feeling a little foolish, if the Force had been influencing him the day he ordered it. 

After the first round that night, they fell asleep. Hux woke to the feel of Rey’s hand on him, and saw that Kylo’s head was buried between her legs. When she had cried out her climax, she turned on her side between them and hooked her leg over Kylo’s long thigh in invitation. No words were necessary as Kylo wrapped their minds together again. Before long, Hux was rocking into her gently from behind, while Kylo did the same from the front. He could feel Kylo’s length sliding against him through her walls and a dimmer sense of Kylo feeling the same, while from Rey came the pleasure-pain of being so full of them. 

Kylo’s hand stroked down his back to hold his hip, a warm weight grounding him into the present. Hux had a tendency to drift from them, his mind still shying away from the devotion of his two lovers even after all the years that passed. The lights in the room were low, but it was bright enough he could look into Kylo’s eyes, shadowed by the hair that kept falling into his face. Those dark eyes held his own prisoner with their intensity. 

The heat and tightness surrounding him was a sweet torment, sending him near the edge all too quickly. He pressed his chest closer to the smooth skin of Rey’s back and cupped his hand around her breast. She cried out when he pinched her nipple and buried her head in Kylo’s neck. Kylo nuzzled her lovingly, telling her how good she was for them, how much he loved feeling both of them like this. 

The room was quiet apart from the wet noises their movements made, the sound of their gasping breaths, and Kylo’s low voice as he whispered to them. Sometimes Hux wished that Kylo would be silent; he was forever talking during sex, drowning them in praise. The most saccharine endearments passed his lips without a trace of embarrassment. Hux kissed him to shut him up for a minute, slowly tracing his tongue over Kylo’s full lips.

 _I love you_ , Kylo said in his mind. 

Hux pulled back with a scowl to see Kylo’s eyes lit up with mischief. It was impossible to hide anything with their thoughts so entwined. Kylo tenderly stroked Hux’s cheek and over his mouth. Then, there was no place for thought anymore as Kylo took a firmer hold of Hux’s hip and began to thrust, long and deep. Hux put his fingers between Rey’s legs. He knew what she liked, and her pleasure sang to him through their connection.

Rey moaned. She was close, her body tensed, needing just that little bit more to reach her climax. Hux pushed into her as far as he could and bit down on her shoulder. Power flowed around them and there was electricity in the air, enough to raise the hairs on Hux’s arms.

“Come for me,” Kylo whispered to them, and the darkness took them. 

  


* * *

  


Things had been tense between them since Snoke sent his demand. Rey had been out of her mind with rage, almost more so than Kylo, whose resignation was already deep in his eyes and in the rounding of his shoulders. He blamed himself, that he had given her children when it should have been Hux. He withdrew from them, spent much time in his room meditating over his grandfather’s mask. Seeking guidance, or strength. Darth Vader fell to save his children, after all. Kylo meant to do the same, but when it came to it, he wasn’t as strong as Vader.

Snoke made Hux the bearer of his message. It was simple and short: “ _Kylo Ren’s children are ready. Send them to me._ ” They were five years old. 

It was revenge, of course, not the message itself, but that Hux was required to deliver it. Snoke had never forgiven Hux for persuading him to release Rey, for falling in love with her and with Kylo, for standing firm to protect them from their master’s wrath. He had known there would be payment one day, but telling them their children were being stolen by a monster was a heavy price indeed.

Much as Hux loved Kylo and Rey, he found himself unable to feel anything more than a distant affection for their children. He’d decided soon after the birth that something was wrong with him, when Kylo was moon-eyed with wonder and happiness, and Rey shared with them both the pure joy of her children at the touch of their mother in their half-formed minds; drowsy and milk-drunk, they sighed and slept in perfect peace whenever she pulled at the delicate threads of energy around them.

He kept his awful secret deep inside: he was glad it wasn’t his children being taken. He hated himself for the wall of relief that kept him from the true despair of his lovers. From behind transparisteel he watched them unravel and he couldn’t touch them, a gulf between them widening day by day. 

Kylo brought them together that night. One last memory to keep Hux going for the rest of his life, something to cling to when the guilt clawed. He’d only done what Kylo wanted. Rey would understand that one day, when he told her. At the time he was sure he would tell her, one day. Maybe.

As terrible a secret as his relief was, his other burden was an impossible weight that came to be a part of him. A hundred thousand times his mind went down the same path and explored the same branching possibilities, and every time he came to the same result: uncertainty.

Hux hated being uncertain as much as he despised himself for the indecisiveness that was his fatal weakness. A general can’t be wishy-washy. In the heat of battle it’s better to choose a path to take and lead one’s men there with confidence, even if it turns out to be the wrong one. His training had drummed that into him, and when there was no time to think, only act, he excelled. He made the right choices, again and again. That was why he was a general before he was thirty-five, an emperor less than ten years later. 

But.

When there _was_ time to think, he vacillated. He spent hours considering, running simulations, testing outcomes, factoring in qualifiers, examining precedents. He took too long to make the choice, floundering in indecision, unable to trust his instincts the way he could under fire. 

He had slept well that night, exhausted after their activities. Rey always lay between him and Kylo; Hux tended to wake up early and start working in his office, Kylo watching him bleary eyed, slumped in a chair by the door with a large cup of caf in his hand. Hux used to tease him for being a poor guard, until he was forced to eat his words one day when a blur of movement was the only warning before Kylo’s red blade was at his throat, other hand still comfortably wrapped around his mug, not a drop spilled.

That day felt typical. His body ached a bit when he sat down at his desk in a dressing robe, just to answer a few messages that came in overnight. He yawned and headed for the refresher, inviting Kylo to join him. Kylo shook his head, made some excuse about going to train with some of the newer guards for awhile. They kissed briefly and Kylo smiled at him. Then he was gone.

Hux wasn’t one for long showers, tender backside or not, so he was out again and dressed within a few minutes. A high priority comm dinged on his pad, and he paused from reaching for his cup of tea to answer it. The call was from the palace flight control room. Taral Kylo Ren had taken a shuttle and broken atmosphere without authorization or logging a flight plan. He was not responding to hails.

Hux’s heart pounded. He realized that he knew already, had known from that smile. He punched in the call sign for Kylo’s personal comm. It was still in range; he hadn’t reached hyperspace yet. There was still a chance.

“Don’t do this,” were Hux’s first words. He didn’t waste time asking questions.

“I’m sorry, Hux,” Kylo said. “I can’t let this happen. I have to try.”

Hux’s body was ice. Even as Starkiller Base collapsed around him he hadn’t felt like this. At the time it had felt that his life was over, but that was a mere shadow of this terror. “Come back. We’ll think of something else, something together.”

Kylo’s mouth twisted with stubbornness. “No. By then it will be too late.”

“Give it a chance, Kylo. Please. Don’t do this. Don’t leave us like this.” Hux’s voice was cracking. He was sure that Rey would be able to hear from the other room, that any moment she would be blazing through the door, adding her voice to his.

A glimmer of Kylo’s old arrogance flared. “What makes you think I’ll fail?”

“Why didn’t you take Rey?” Hux half-rose from his seat, suddenly unsure if Rey _was_ still sleeping in the other room. 

The arrogance faded. “She’ll need you, Hux. If I don’t come back.”

Hux took another look at the door. He should wake Rey right now. Kylo would listen to her. He was completely soft to her, unable to resist her at all.

“She’ll sleep for awhile yet. I deepened her sleep with the Force. She won’t wake up.” Kylo’s eyes glittered. “What if I _can_ do it? It has to be worth trying.”

“This is insanity, Kylo! This is just typical of your reckless, impulsive behaviour! You never think anything through. There has to be another way. There has to be!” Hux knew he shouldn’t be shouting at Kylo, that insulting him only made him more bullheaded.

Kylo’s eyes drifted away from his, looking past Hux to his navicomp. It must have finished calculating the hyperjump. Hux cursed himself. He was wasting time arguing when he could have been scrambling TIEs, activating the planetary defence grid, even directing one of the star destroyers in orbit to use its tractor beams. Now it was too late.

“Wish me luck, Hux. I love you.”

The impossible, stupid, infuriating man. “Please,” Hux begged. “Please.”

“May the Force be with you,” Kylo said. His image flickered, and he was gone.

For a minute, Hux sat staring at his datapad. Then he carefully set it down on his desk and stood up. He should go see if Rey was awake. If Kylo was telling the truth about the Force sleep, maybe Hux’s shouting broke through.

It was early still, and the light filtering through the curtains was weak. Rey was curled up under the covers, one hand pillowing her cheek. Her face was peaceful, and it didn’t look like she had moved in some time. The room was heavy with the smell of sleep and their loving the night before, familiar and warm. He allowed himself to imagine for a moment that Kylo was in the fresher or somewhere else close, and that when he returned, he would convince Hux to come back to bed again. He would be dragged back down into dreams by the sound of his lovers’ breaths and the comfort of having them near.

He was wasting time. Forcing himself to lean forward, he reached out to touch Rey’s shoulder. If he shook her hard enough, surely she would wake. If that didn’t work, he could wrap himself around her and project his thoughts at her sleeping mind. Certainly she would hear him shouting at her through the dark web of wherever Kylo sent her and come back to him.

Then a network of possibility unfolded in front of his eyes, and his hand stilled, millimetres from her shoulder. He was lost. He withdrew his hand and crossed his arms so he wouldn’t be tempted to reach out again. The number of possibilities dizzied him, and he took a breath through the sudden tightness in his chest. He needed to coalesce the probabilities into the most likely outcomes. 

Outcome one: he manages to wake up Rey and tell her what is going on. She immediately takes a ship and goes to join Kylo; there is no question in his mind she would do so. If she left in the next few minutes, there would still be time. Together the two of them face Snoke and together they live or die. For a moment, he almost gets lost in the branching paths of what would happen if one died and one lived, or if there was some sort of stalemate, or if they lived, but never returned to him, or— 

No. This wasn’t productive. Too many unknowns circled around him. The only certainties with this choice were that Rey would go and one or both might not return. 

He couldn’t lose them both. He couldn’t. Panic threatened and he clenched his fists, digging his fingertips into his palms deeply enough that his closely trimmed nails bit in. Panic served no purpose. An officer didn’t panic. Hux refocused with difficulty.

Outcome two: he can’t wake up Rey. Therefore he waits until she wakes up naturally. The certainties are that Rey would be safe here and Kylo might not return.

Good, he had it settled already on two clear choices. His mind went back to the first outcome. The chances of victory over Snoke would be vastly higher if Rey were there. Hux had seen little of Snoke’s power directly, but he was confident that the erstwhile supreme leader was a being of immense power in the dark side. Perhaps then, the chances are _not_ vastly higher. A one percent chance of victory only doubles to two percent, a vanishingly small chance.

If he woke Rey, he might be condemning her to death, alongside Kylo, who must also be doomed. On the other hand, Snoke is a being who exists in the physical realm of flesh and blood. Rey told him that she once saw Snoke’s finger bleed when he smacked it against a stone wall by accident, shredding the skin. His blood was the darkest shade of rusted purple, she told Hux, almost black. Snoke had needed bacta gel to heal the wound, the same as any other mortal.

So perhaps the possibility could be as high as a fifty percent chance of success with Kylo alone, doubling to one hundred percent with Rey there. In that case, it would be foolish to leave her sleeping when she might tip the balance.

He leaned over again. “Rey,” he said, very quietly. No response.

His heart was still pounding, and he rested his weight on his clenched fists on the bed. The slight dip in the mattress didn’t wake her. His legs were shaking too, so he carefully eased himself up onto the bed and sat on an angle with his legs hanging over the edge, body twisted towards her. She didn’t move.

A clock sat on the table beside the bed, an ancient design made with little metal cogs and springs in a case of real wood. Rey had put it together herself and given it to him as a birthday gift one year. _For the man who has everything but time_ , she’d written in the card. He stared at it now, watching the minute hand inch around, once, twice, three times.

He fisted his hands in his lap and tried to summon the sense of urgency that he required to make a decision. The urgency was real, there was no need to fake that. He was trembling all over from the adrenaline, his breath coming in short pants, his mind racing again and again over the possibilities. 

It wasn’t difficult to summon the bark of his father’s voice in his ear. _“A general is decisive! He doesn’t wait passively for events to unfold. They unfold according to the strategic plans he laid in advance, and he adapts quickly to any changes._ ”

The problem was that Hux had no strategy prepared and no time or information to adapt. He tried to envision the current situation as a training simulation he might have faced back at the academy. The most valuable fighter from his forces has gone alone to face a powerful enemy. Enemy’s strength: unknown. Enemy’s abilities: unknown. Chance of success: incalculable. It would be foolish in the extreme to send another irreplaceable fighter to assist. Yet if this were a war, and killing Snoke would be the masterstroke to end the conflict for good, would the potential sacrifice be worth it? 

It was exactly the type of scenario his father would have designed, meant to demonstrate to the young cadets the importance of long-term strategy and contingency planning. Here there was no backup plan; it was all in. Hux had held the lives of billions in his hands, and never hesitated to give the orders sending them to their deaths. Now Rey’s life was in his hands, and Kylo’s too, and he could not decide.

The minutes ticked by as he sat there frozen, half watching the clock, half watching Rey sleep. His stomach roiled in dread, cold sweat dripped down his neck. He looked at the clock again. This was it. He had to act. It’s already too late, a voice inside him whispered. He wanted to listen to that voice, to relax and let go of this impossible choice. 

Kylo was powerful too, he must not forget. After the war was over, the tattered remnants of the Resistance struggled on for some time. In a major coup attempt, they managed to hide a bomb in the palace. Kylo sensed something in the Force just before it went off and managed to shield Hux and the others near him from the blast, holding the ceiling up so they could escape. Hux could still feel the weight of Kylo’s arm around his waist, their bodies pressed tight together as Kylo dragged him from the room. The crash when Kylo let it all go was louder than the original blast had been. They had stood tangled together, gasping for breath. Kylo’s hand had rested on his back while Hux leaned against him for a moment, boneless with shock, before he pushed Kylo away and started snapping orders. 

So perhaps he wasn’t giving enough credit to Kylo. For a second, Hux was filled with a surge of confident relief. Rey wasn’t needed; Kylo could do this on his own. The feeling faded all too fast when he remembered the network of scars on Kylo and Rey’s bodies, and Hux had to resist the urge to cover his face in despair.

Another twenty seconds passed. Rey’s forehead creased slightly, and he took a small gasping breath, prepared to say something if she opened her eyes... She relaxed again and sighed.

If his trembling and gasping beside her in a fury of agitation hadn’t woken her, perhaps she cannot be woken. He wanted to relax into that thought, too, be absolved by it. His eyes darted to the clock again. Another minute had passed.

The light coming through the curtains was starting to get brighter, and the room was warming up. Still Hux sat and stared at the clock and at Rey and _couldn’t decide._

_He could not decide._

He was surprised by a little whimper that came from his throat, humiliatingly familiar. It reminded him of standing in front of his father’s desk while the commandant read a report from his school of one failure or another, while Hux waited to be acknowledged in some way, however negative. 

It was the same sound that he made in the moment just before his punishment. Once the pain started he could be stoic, could hold back the yelps and tears. It was the anticipation, the dread, that undid him. He whimpered again, consciously this time, just to hear how pathetic it sounded in the quiet room.

No reaction from Rey. 

He wanted to be enraged with Kylo for doing this to them. If Kylo were here, he thought he’d do quite well at it. But all he could feel was failure, and dread, and a gnawing guilt that was beginning to suffocate him.

In the background, his mind raced up and down all the pathways he had imagined. Some were collapsing now with the passage of time, but others were opening up. It was dizzying, exhausting. He thought he might have been sick, if he’d actually eaten anything yet that day, and if he could bring himself to stand up away from the bed. 

The clock told him that fifteen minutes passed, then half an hour, then an hour. Two hours. Three. Kylo would be there. Even now he might be fighting. Winning. Losing. Dying. Living. Hux wished he could hold Rey in his arms while he waited, but he didn’t want to risk her waking up before he knew what happened. It would be cruel to make her wait like this with him, too late to do anything else. 

It seemed there was a third outcome that he hadn’t factored in: do nothing and see what happens. Wait, don’t choose, flip back and forth between the options until a groove was worn in his mind that hurt to walk along. His mind felt like there were blisters raised within it where his thoughts had rubbed over and over in the same place. Fear dulled into something blander but more insidious, claws around his stomach. 

He jumped when his datapad beeped at him urgently from the other room. It was a special tone that he had assigned to all comms from Snoke himself. He vision darkened at the corners of his eyes as he forced himself to stand. Bile was rising in the back of his mouth; he could taste the acid as he swallowed convulsively again and again. His legs were stiff and his back ached from sitting so still and twisted on the bed. 

The distance between his bedroom and his office stretched and expanded with each step, but all too soon he was standing, staring down at the alert on his pad. His stomach heaved and he clapped his hand over his mouth as he tapped the bouncing icon. The message was text only, and he was so absurdly grateful for that kindness that he almost sank to his knees.

The message was short, and to the point. 

_Taral Kylo Ren is dead._

This time, he couldn’t stop the whimpering, had to admit that it was more like sobbing, after a while. 

  


* * *

  


Rey opens her eyes. Hux’s eyes are screwed up tight and there are tears running down his cheeks. His face is naked and raw, as she has rarely seen it. The emotions from his memory swim through her: fear, dread, anger, grief. She struggles to separate herself from his feelings to see what her own are. This new knowledge of Hux’s terrible indecision is hard to fit in with what she accepted had happened those years ago.

Hux had lied to her and she hadn’t known. That in itself is unsettling; she hadn’t thought it possible. Thinking back though, perhaps he had never lied outright. When she woke up finally, late that night, she had known immediately that Kylo was gone, the lack of his presence a new emptiness in the Force. In the confusion and upset, Hux had never had to explain his actions exactly. He mentioned that he went to wake her, but Kylo had put her in a Force sleep. Both of those things were true. She had just assumed that he had been unable to wake her, and never considered that he wouldn’t have tried.

She stands up abruptly. He is looking up at her now and she glances at him, and then away to the door of the refresher. His face reminds her of the way Julion used to look as a young child when she had to punish him for some misdeed: a flimsy wall of defiance barely holding back an avalanche of guilt.

She is so tired. Too tired for this. Now it becomes clear why he insisted on doing this in her room. If they had been in his, she would already have walked out. It’s more fuel for the rage building inside her. Without a word, she stalks into the refresher and closes the door, leaning heavily against it.

In the past, when she was feeling particularly full of hatred, and also particularly daring, she dreamed that Snoke was dead and she could do whatever she wanted. In those dreams she was still young and the galaxy held the promise of freedom and adventure. She can pinpoint to the second the last moment when she truly felt that her life would be like that: when she piloted the _Millennium Falcon_ down onto Ahch-To and saw the island and the ocean and knew everything she had longed for was _real._

But that was an illusion. She had been a prisoner in one way or another for her whole life. Even now, her love for Hux held her in captivity. His need for her forgiveness, his expectation that she will _understand_ that he let their lover die because he didn’t want to lose her too. He’s still trying to get her to fit into the mould that he fashioned for her, ready to re-launch them as the power couple they never were, for the sake of an empire she never believed in and doesn’t care enough about to despise.

She is lower than a prisoner even; she’s property, always has been. Of Unkar Plutt, of Jedi dogma, of the Resistance itself—she was as much their weapon as when she fought with the knights, the assumption always being that she could be aimed without question—and of course, of Snoke. She never thought of Hux owning her, or Kylo, though it turns out that they both wanted that. 

A dreary future rolls out in front of her. Standing at Hux’s side at the events she hates, waiting for him in bed, up too late working as always. Watching him grab his power back and disappear from her again, only turning up for social occasions or arguments. 

She can’t remember why she loves him sometimes, how much it consumed her at the beginning. Was it love? Or was he just the antidote to the confusion she carried from Snoke’s training? Hux seemed straightforward. She could read his thoughts and knew what he wanted from her, what he felt for her. It was simple. He wanted her and she wanted him to want her. 

No, that’s too cruel. She wanted him too, for himself. The way his cold handsomeness dissolved into soft warmth at her smile, his keen, ordered mind roughening around the edges when she kissed him. It was like glimpsing into another universe where a different version of him lived, but all within him. He was as sharp and clear as a kyber crystal and she was lured in by the facets he revealed, one by one. She held him in her hand and turned him over and over, marvelling at the way the light or dark refracted through him. He was fascinating.

When she left him to live with Snoke, she tried not to think of him anymore, lying alone in his huge bed, sitting hunched at his desk for hours with his datapad. She managed to put those images away, to hide them in a small portion of her mind she kept from Snoke. A little lockbox stuffed with memories of Kylo and Hux and her children. She kept her feelings for all of them locked up with the memories, so tight she must have stopped feeling them after a while. The lockbox was still in her head, but she lost the key, or maybe Snoke took it with him. 

Instead of thinking about Hux, she looked for him every day in the Force. Not at night, that was the time she sat with Snoke in the shadows. No, it was in the morning, first thing when she woke up, when her mind was still soft enough from dreams to hold some hope. He was a tiny spark among trillions, but she always knew how to find him. From him, she traced to her children. At that distance she could do no more than sense their life forces, but that was enough. To know they were there.

She turns her head to look at the cool tile wall, wanting nothing more than to rest her forehead against it and give in to the ache in her chest. She is so tired, and something is missing from her. It’s becoming more and more clear that she is diminished, as Taral said. Tears burn at the edge of her eyes and she looks up to the ceiling to stop them from forming.

A tap sounds at the door. “Rey,” Hux calls. “Come out, please.”

Slowly, she turns around and opens it. She grips the door frame with one hand, the door handle with the other.

“Why did you tell me this?”

He is pale, but his cheeks are blotchy and his eyes are rimmed with red. “You should know the truth.”

“Why now?” 

“I was being poisoned by it all these years.” At her raised eyebrows, he scrambles to explain, “My own fault, of course. I made a terrible mistake and I let myself be consumed by the guilt, let myself drive you away because of it.”

She is silent for a long time. “What do you want me to say?” she asks finally.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” His voice cracks, “I was so afraid all the time. I couldn’t love you how I wanted to, even from the start. I thought I would lose something, that I couldn’t keep myself and keep you both too.” He rubs a shaky hand over his face. “Keeping you safe was the only thing I ever wanted to do. I should have tried to wake you. I know that now.” He doesn’t sound quite convinced. “But I couldn’t—I couldn’t decide. _I couldn’t_ _decide.”_ He almost howls out the last and then he’s holding his face is in his hands to hide his wracking sobs.

He had been dry eyed when she woke up that day to find Kylo gone. She hadn’t seen him cry afterwards either, not once. Rey clutches the door frame and reaches down with her blessed hand to rest it on his head. His hair is thin and she can feel the shape of his skull. She imagines her stone inside him and wills a little light to warm it. He relaxes into the feeling, releasing a shuddering breath. She is a part of him now. 

“I’m leaving,” she says. She thinks of Taral’linas and wonders where she is, what she is looking at right then. What is it like to see through those red eyes? Does it give her the remove from reality she needs? Maybe the replacements do help. If she is a construct, the pain can’t belong to her. 

“ _Who are you?”_ Those were Luke’s first words to her. He didn’t mean it literally, he’d already seen her in a vision coming to him. It was one of his questions to make her think. She had never had the time to think about things like that before. 

“ _I’m no one,”_ she had replied.

Years later, on the way into Snoke’s fortress, Luke stopped her just outside the door and asked her again: “ _Who are you_?” 

She had smiled at him, wide and bright. “ _I’m Rey. A Jedi.”_ She’d seen it then, in his blue eyes. He knew he was going to die. As her smile began to fade, he’d smiled at her so sweetly. 

“ _Rey. May the Force be with you.”_ Not with _us_. With _you_. 

“Leaving,” Hux repeats. 

She can’t resist skimming along his surface thoughts. He is thinking of Taral’linas too, and how Rey let her go so gracefully, a feat he is finding impossible to replicate.

“Come with me.” 

For a moment, his face lights up, like she’d said _I forgive you_ instead. Then fear bubbles up inside him and the pathways open to his anxiety. The work left undone, her anger at him, questions about where they would go and what they would do. He is genuinely torn; tempted. But the guilt wins, and the fear. He doesn’t deserve it, a little voice whispers inside him. Not when there is still so much to do. He is needed here. He must fulfill his duty.

“Rey,” he says helplessly.

She nods at him. Quick and sharp. He wanted her to _understand._ She does. Oh, she does. “I think you should go.” 

His face is stricken. “You won’t leave right away, surely? We need to discuss where you’ll stay, your security and escort…”

“ _We_ don’t need to discuss anything.”

“Not like this. Don’t leave like this. Not again. Please.”

His hoverchair is still blocking the refresher door. With a wave of her hand it’s moving backward, out of the way. 

“Stop it,” he says, as she turns him around to face the door.

“Ah, don’t like being under someone else’s control?” The taunt is petty, but too good to miss.

As she pushes his chair to the door with the weight of the Force, he throws it into full reverse with the hand controls and the motor makes a high pitched whine as its power struggles against her own. He twists around to look at her. “Please, Rey. Kylo wouldn’t have wanted us to be like this.”

Abruptly she stops her Force push and he flies backwards for a second, almost running into the chairs set by the window, before he manages to bring the chair to a standstill.

“You _dare_ bring him into this? You condemned him to death when you sat and stared at me sleeping until it was too late and you didn’t have to _choose_ anymore.”

“ _He_ is the one that put you in the sleep. Not me. _He wanted you to stay behind._ To live.” His tone is pleading, and for a moment she despises him. 

It’s only another kind of prison, to be forced to live _for_ someone else, _by_ someone else. Hux couldn’t choose, but she was never given a chance to. If only Kylo hadn’t been so selfishly reckless— “He was a fooland a coward _._ He killed himself so he wouldn’t have to live like I did. Don’t you see why I can’t let him go? He chose death over us. I can’t forgive him for it.”

“Snoke is the villain here,” Hux argues. “He turned us on each other. Did you ever consider _that_ when you were crying because he’s gone?”

She reels back. “Get out of here. Get out.” She can’t look at him because she knows she’ll only see his disgust.

“We’ll talk again tomorrow. When we’re not so tired,” he says placatingly, ever the diplomat. His hoverchair slowly moves out of the room. He’s sitting very upright, and she can sense how much he wants her to call him back.

She doesn’t.

  


* * *

  


As soon as he’s gone, she puts a comm request through to the temple. The master of Ren replies within minutes. Their conversation is brief. Rey knows Hux will never let her leave without an escort, so she arranges her own. She requests four knights who are drawn to the light side and willing to be away for some time. Master Ren asks no questions, simply nods and says they will be ready to leave first thing.

Rey is ready to cut the call when the master asks her to wait.

“I’ve thought long about what you said today, Your Highness. I’m considering asking Taral Ren to join us on the council. I know he has many duties at the palace, which is why he wasn’t invited before, but we saw … sense in your words. We’d like to explore Taral’s ideas further.”

Rey is pleased and expresses her appreciation. For a minute, she thinks of sharing the news with Hux and then her heart aches when she remembers.

She lies awake a long time. Finally she admits defeat and drags herself out of bed. She doesn’t bother with a robe. It’s not far, and she can hide herself in the Force from the guards.

Hux is sitting propped up in bed under the covers, looking at his datapad. He is surprised to see her, but he smiles. He lowers the pad to his lap, and as she approaches the bed, she sees that rather than reading, he’s looking at a holo.

“What’s that?” She indicates the picture on the screen. She stands beside the bed a little awkwardly. It strikes her that since her return she’s spent most of her time above him or sitting eye to eye. It’s different than it was before, when she was always looking up and up at her two tall lovers.

He flushes and looks down at the image frozen on the screen. “It’s old. One of the battlefield holos of you from the war. This one is my favourite.”

“Can I see?” Uninvited, she goes around to the other side of the bed and climbs in, then settles beside him, close enough to see the screen, but not touching him.

He restarts it. She doesn’t recognize the planet. It’s a bright day in an urban area; the street lined with shops and businesses could be anywhere. The camera follows a group of stormtroopers as they advance toward a large building in front of them, some sort of government office. In the distance, a figure steps out into the middle of the street. The figure raises an arm and twin icy blue blades appear from either side of a long hilt.

She looks closer as the camera zooms in. Young Rey settles into a relaxed crouch and the stormtroopers raise their weapons. 

Hux clears his throat and pauses it. “I usually watch it slowed down. Otherwise you’re just a blur.”

“All right.”

He taps the controls and presses play again. Even at a slow speed, it’s difficult to see how she blocks the hail of blaster fire. Her blades whirl and blur and it looks like she is dancing, her feet taking measured steps left and right, her weight easily shifting as she bends and leans.

“Look,” he says, pointing, as she executes a series of flips and jumps that bring her close enough to take down the troops with her blade directly.

The clip ends as she swipes at the probe that was carrying the camera, the beam of her lightsaber flashing close and the screen going black.

They watch it again at full speed. Hux was right, she is just a blur, moving inhumanly fast. It never felt that way. She had been so immersed in the light side that time slowed to a crawl and she could bat away the blaster bolts with an ease that was almost lazy. Her arm twitches slightly, muscles remembering the movements. 

“How many times have you watched that?” she asks.

Hux shifts uncomfortably. “I’m not entirely certain,” he admits.

Shame is pouring off him in waves. A thought: “Have you ever”—she waves at his groin, making a fist with a pumping action—“to it?”

He makes a choked sound. “Umm…”

She has to laugh. “Oh, Armitage.”

He puts the datapad on the bedside table. “Can I hold you?”

In response she slides down all the way onto her back and turns on her side away from him. But she tucks in closer to him in invitation, and he turns too, pulls her in close and wraps around her.

“Don’t go,” he says quietly.

“I can’t be here anymore.” 

He doesn’t respond to that. After a few minutes, his breathing evens out, little puffs of air tickling the hair on the back of her neck where he’s buried his nose.

She brushes his mind gently. He’s not quite asleep, but close. 

“Will you come see me someday?” she whispers. 

He doesn’t answer right away, but she knows he heard her.

Finally he mumbles something into her neck. _“I will,_ ” she thinks it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to comment!
> 
> My friend made me a [musical theme](https://soundcloud.com/jackson_84/rey2-1) for Rey  
> Inspiration music: [Prospero's Speech by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HPBLI7Z5Pg)  
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/isharan)  
> Check out more of [SAINTVADER's](http://saintvader.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) amazing art!


	11. Epilogue

_Two years later_

The Voss-Ka spaceport is bustling, mostly with the traffic of one of the two native species to Voss, the multi-hued humanoids that take their name from the planet. Their colourful skin and orange eyes give Hux pause, but the few Gormak he spots—the other native species is reptilian in form—make Hux’s skin crawl. 

Voss is a strange world, on the edge of balance in many ways, not least in its competing populations. Rey told him the people there were taught by both the Jedi and the Sith thousands of years ago, that they walk a path of shadows between the darkness and light. That they use the Force for prophecy and healing. That their prophecies always come true.

A slender, red-skinned Voss female in a crisp uniform greets him with a bow when he exits his ship, his hoverchair halting at the bottom of the ramp in front of her. “Welcome, Emperor Hux,” she says. Up close, her eyes shimmer oddly under the artificial lights of the docking area. With a jolt of horror, he realizes she has no eyelids, and he is unable meet her unblinking gaze, her insectoid compound eyes shockingly alien in a human-like face.

The First Order Empire has not yet extended this far into the Outer Rim. In the last decade or so there have been talks between the Empire and the Tion Hegemony, who rule the sector. He’s confident that they will join in time. Not his time, however. That is at an end.

His formal abdication a week ago ended his reign. He hopes to return for his daughter’s coronation, but no promises have been made. A dull ache fills his chest when he thinks of what he’s given up, and it feels like he’s abandoned his post, that his ship is going down while he flees in the last remaining lifepod. But the Empire is thriving and will continue to do so without him. He is certain of that, or so he tells himself.

His guard of six knights moves to surround him, a new taral leading the way, one of several who replaced Anakin Ren and his sister. Anakin has taken a permanent position on the council of the Knights of Ren; he was needed there more. The new taral is a younger man, shorter and slimmer than Kylo’s son. It’s a relief sometimes, when Hux catches sight of his protector out of the corner of his eye. He’s never once mistaken him for Kylo, despite the similar black robes and mask. 

Some of the knights have taken to wearing other colours over the past year. Disparate factions have grown within the order, and colour is an easy shorthand to show allegiance to one’s group. One of Hux’s guards wears the deep red of a blood-knight, sworn to uphold the path of darkness through pain. Another wears a robe of pale grey, a shadow-knight who uses visions and rituals to find her way between the dark and the light. So far the factions have found a way to coexist, but the continued unity of the order is another concern for the future. Orelia’s concern. Not his. 

They make their way out of the spaceport to a waiting shuttle. It’s midday local time, but the warmth of the sunlight bathes everything in a yellow haze, reminding Hux of the lazy end of a summer afternoon. The air is pleasantly warm too, and scented with the familiar smells of a busy city: spicy street food, speeder exhaust, hot durasteel. 

The red-skinned woman passes him off to a blue-skinned male in ornate hooded robes, who bows and gestures for Hux to enter a waiting shuttle.

They travel out of the city and fly high over a mature forest, trees with leaves in a dizzying variety of orange and yellow shades packed close in together. No signs of habitation disturb the trees, and when Hux asks, the blue-skinned man shakes his head. “Dangerous place,” he says, “spirits live there.” His Basic is thickly accented, but he seemed to understand Hux’s question well enough. 

Rey’s home is a small stone cottage in a clearing, with no other dwellings nearby. It’s made from a white stone that he saw here and there in the city; up close it glitters with flecks of a shiny mineral that runs through it like veins. The house is a single storey, with an attached speeder garage on one side, and on the other, a garden filled with flowers. The front of the house has a veranda running across the entire width, and here Rey is sitting in the shade, rising to greet them as their shuttle lands.

As she steps out from under the overhanging roof, the sunlight seems to spread over her slowly, lighting up each loved and remembered feature one by one, so that he can take her in piece by piece. Light glances off an elegant cheekbone, ignites the silver of her hair. He sees her as if for the first time. Her welcoming smile, the soft grey of her light robes, the delicacy of the hand she lifts to wave at them, covered in scars and age spots, yet as dear to him as his own heart. His love is drenched in a golden glow, the warm yellow sun caressing her face. She is beautiful. He can feel his lips spreading into a grin at the sight of her, and he finds it impossible to keep it under control.

As soon as the shuttle lands, he is impatiently waiting for the ramp to come down so he can shoot out. His guards and the blue-skinned man follow at a more sedate pace, but Hux is already pushing himself up out of his chair. The hours of tedious exercise to learn to walk again were worth it just for the way her eyes shine to see him take his hesitant steps towards her.

She holds his hand gently in her own and smiles wide, that dazzling grin that seduced him all those years ago when he saw it in a surveillance holo. The battlefield footage had been fascinating, but the holo he loved the most was from a marketplace on some forgettable world, just a quick glimpse of her face, breaking into a huge smile at something her companion said. It was a rare sight in the years he knew her, and always treasured.

“Armitage, you came,” she breathes, and she pushes her emotions to him, her joy at seeing him, that he came for her at last. 

He pulls her close, uncaring of their audience, and buries his face in her neck, inhaling her familiar scent now overlaid with the smells of the forest. He opens his mind, but can’t focus enough to say anything coherent, can only try to show her how happy he is to be there.

She strokes his hair, and her thoughts curl gently around his. _You came, you came, you came,_ she repeats over and over.

Finally they separate, and the blue-skinned man bows to her and says something in the Voss language. She replies in the same tongue, pulling Hux to stand at her side, their hands joined.

The knights step forward and bow deeply. She nods her head gracefully, touching her chest in respect. “Your knights can stay at the refuge nearby,” she tells Hux. “We are quite safe here; there are perimeter force fields to keep out wildlife, and the refuge isn’t far.”

“Your Highnesses, with all due respect—” the taral begins.

“It will be fine, Taral Ren,” Hux says. Even he can feel the swirl of power around Rey. He has nothing to fear while she is with him.

The knights bow again, as a group, and turn to reboard the shuttle.

“Shadow-sister,” Rey says unexpectedly, calling to the knight in grey. The woman turns in response. “Take off your mask.”

The knight complies. She’s nearing middle age, fair skinned with dark curly hair caught up in a loose bun. Her expression is guarded and wary.

Rey goes forward to her and takes her hand carefully, looking into her eyes for a long moment. The woman’s expression gradually relaxes, turns contemplative. 

“Light and dark be with you,” Rey says, then steps away.

The woman bows and smiles slightly as she straightens. “I stand between the candle and the flame,” she replies, and puts her hand over her heart.

  


* * *

  


It’s only when they are inside, out of the hazy sunlight, that Hux sees Rey properly. As if a glamour was lifted from his eyes he sees how bent over she is, how thin, how her hands shake. He tries to hide his shock at her frail appearance, though she gives him a sharp look. 

Since she healed him the day Snoke died, he’s felt stronger than he had in years. He still tires from standing and walking too much, but he is well and whole, thanks to her. It’s too cruel that she is suddenly so old, seemingly older than he is, despite the fifteen or so years between them.

A droid prepares them food. One of her original escort had stayed on Voss, the rest returning to Coruscant after she settled here. Nothing indicates that anyone lives here except for Rey and the droid, which worries him, despite her insistence that the refuge is close by.

While they wait for the food to be served they sit back outside on the veranda, on a comfortable sofa that has clearly seen much use. Rey settles onto it gingerly, as if she is in pain. Her eyes close briefly as she rests back against the cushions, but she smiles at him brightly when she opens them again.

“You turned up exactly when the high priest said you would,” she says with delight. 

The blue-skinned man had pointed out the Tower of Prophecy in Voss-Ka as they flew past it, the centre of Voss mysticism. Future-telling would be a useful skill to have on the side of the Empire, he notes, then remembers that is no longer his concern. Still, a little message to Orelia could refer to it. She would understand the implication; their daughter is a clever woman, almost as clever as he is.

Hux takes Rey’s hand. Hers is cool and fragile, softest skin covering only bones. Under Orelia’s strict eye he managed to put some weight back on over the past two years, but he will never be anything but slender. His long fingers lace with hers, and together the brittleness of their joints with their inadequate covering of flesh feels risky, like something could snap at any moment.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” he says. 

He had made the effort to stay in touch this time, sending her short messages every month or so, keeping her up to date with all that was going on with the family and the Empire. She had replied less often, her own messages full of the philosophy that she was studying with the Voss mystics, almost impenetrable to a non-Force-user. 

“You came at the right time.” Her hand lifts to smooth down the hair of his beard. He’s been growing it for a while now, enjoying the snowy white softness of it. It makes him look distinguished; at least that’s what Verina told him, and he is always inclined to indulge his granddaughter. “I like it,” Rey says, quite seriously, her fingertips tracing over his mustache and around his mouth.

He can’t resist taking her hand and kissing the back of it, his lips pressing gently once, then again. He suppresses the urge to taste her skin with his tongue, to pull her into his arms and kiss her mouth, to run his hands over her and touch all the places he knows she loves.

Her eyes dance with amusement and he flushes, knowing that she can sense his desire. She leans closer. “Later,” she whispers, and her teeth find his earlobe.

He can’t help the tiny gasp that escapes and knows, from the heat in his ears, that he is bright red. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says, and rests her head on his shoulder. 

He wraps his arms around her carefully and strokes her back the way that always used to soothe her. She burrows in closer and sighs. 

  


* * *

  


The rest of the day passes quickly. She shows him around her little property, the garden someone from the refuge comes to tend every few days. They speak of the doings of the family. Cort Vandron has come to stay permanently; he and Verina will be married in a month or two. Cosinga Palpatine’s attractions waned beside the easygoing lord from Vandron. Cort was a friendly sort, good with people, but not too smart, which would make it easier for him to stand in Verina’s shadow as future consort to the empress. 

Julion’s oldest son is starting to learn the duties of chancellorship from his father. Mari is experimenting with wood sculpture under the tutelage of a Wookiee who recently joined the commune on Taris. 

Orelia is keeping a watchful eye on the Hutts after one of their cartels was chased off Coruscant yet again, before it could be established in the lower levels. Hux began the cleanup of lower Coruscant almost as soon as his reign started, disgusted by the poverty and vice found under the feet of the rich. It’s been a constant battle to keep the criminal syndicates out, one that he is certain Orelia will maintain. His frequent reminders on this, and a million other subjects, have been driving her insane the last few months, he knows.

Rey tells him of Anakin’s work with the knights, of the first generation of children to be trained without Snoke’s guidance. Anakin visited Rey on Voss some months ago, and she has been in regular contact with both him and the council, consulting over the new training regime.

“And Skye,” Hux asks. “Have you heard from your daughter?”

Rey shakes her head slowly. “Anakin hears from her occasionally. Just short messages, nothing to say where she is or what she’s doing.”

This is the pain he gave her, he thinks, almost enjoying the stab of guilt that lances through him. They haven’t spoken again of his failure, and he doesn’t know if she has forgiven him, or ever can. But coming to her now seems to have meant something quite profound.

She smiles at him often, but wearily. Her face is gaunt and she only picks at her food, which is most unlike her.

There is only one bed in the small cottage, but it’s big enough for them both. He wraps himself around her shrunken body and buries his face in her hair. She is as fragile as a glass ornament, and he’s startled by the fierce protectiveness he feels as he holds her. It’s disturbingly quiet, no traffic in the distance, no low level hum of environmental controls, no footsteps outside the door as the guard changes or a patrol walks by. Outside it’s pitch black; they’re too far from the city for even a distant glow to light the night sky.

He tells her about what the blue-skinned man said about the forest, that it was haunted. 

She laughs, and he can feel the vibration against his chest. “The Voss have long memories, and they are honoured to carry the superstitions of their ancestors. You have nothing to fear outside.”

He chooses to believe her. She can keep him safe from anything.

In the darkness it’s easier to ask the questions that he avoided in the daytime. He strokes his hand down her side, can count the ribs under her thin skin. “Are you happy here?”

She is silent a long moment, but then her breath catches and he feels her quiver; she’s trying not to cry. 

_It’s the light_ , she says into his mind, and he tries to relax and open himself to her.

He rubs his hand over her belly, rests it there, fingers splayed. _Yes?_

_I can’t—oh Armitage, I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t_ work _with it anymore._ Her distress leaks into him around her words. He feels a flash of something more extreme—hatred?—that is hidden away before he can identify it. _Sometimes I can touch it, immerse myself in it—_ she pushes a memory into his head and he is dazzled by the radiance of the light. But even he can see the cracks around the edges, the dark bleeding insidiously through it until it overwhelms the light, smothering her. 

He pulls her closer and drops a kiss on her shoulder, making soothing noises. This was never his forte, and he wishes Kylo were here to wrap their minds together. He misses the way Kylo would rest against his emotions, like a soft animal that would sit in your lap and purr gently, a warm comforting weight that made everything seem more manageable.

_It’s all just blocked. I thought being here, where the light and dark are so balanced, that I could learn how to do it too. But I can’t. The dark side is too powerful inside me, and the light doesn’t like being near so much darkness._

_What do the Voss say? Can’t they see how it will be in the future for you?_

She makes a negative noise. _That’s not something they can see. The Force is too changeable for that._

He doesn’t know what to say, so he just holds her, kissing her neck and shoulders occasionally, trying to hide—quite unsuccessfully, he’s certain—his aching desire for her. It feels like he’s been longing for her forever, since before they met. Their years together were too short; they feel like a dream he had once, a brief wonderful interruption to the years of loneliness both before and after.

She turns over suddenly and their lips meet. He can’t contain the groan that bubbles up from his chest, a loud animal sound that seems to fill up the space between them and hover overhead, a lingering sign of his need. She draws their minds together, in the old familiar way, and he allows himself to surrender to the sweet darkness that is Rey.

  


* * *

  


He wakes once in the night to the flicker of a dim light in the corner of the room. As his eyes adjust, he can just make out Rey’s shape, seated on a small stool in front of an altar that he noted there earlier. A single lit candle sits in front of her, and her head is tipped forward, looking down at it.

Electricity is crawling over his skin, raising the hairs on his arms, a barely contained energy that he identifies with the Force. It seems different than other times he’s felt it, brighter, like the crackle of a kindling fire. He watches her for several minutes before he falls asleep again. She doesn’t turn around, though surely she must sense he’s awake.

In the morning she is back snuggled into his side, her face relaxed as she breathes slowly and deeply. It’s been a long time since he woke feeling so refreshed. The window is open, and he lies looking out at the trees and listening to the gentle _shhhh_ of the leaves moving in the wind. The air is fresh and clean, the rich smell of the forest a heady balance of life and decay. 

After a while he strokes her cheek; her wrinkled skin is petal-soft to the touch. Unable to resist, he nuzzles against her, peppering her face with kisses until she wakes up with a hint of a smile.

Her hazel eyes are dreamy as she takes his face in her hands and pulls him in for a kiss. His heart stutters in his chest, and it’s the same feeling he had the first time they kissed, in the garden with Kylo’s jealous glare on them. Her lips had been so soft and she had tasted of the fizzy wine they had drunk at whatever party they’d just come back from. She had been delicious, better than all his fantasies. 

Part of his pleasure was satisfaction that his strategy and careful tactical manoeuvring had finally brought her to his arms. But most of him was dissolving slowly inside, pathetically happy that she would allow him anywhere near her. He was dizzy with his want for her, would have given anything to hear that she wanted him back as much. Of course, behind that was terror. He hadn’t known until their lips touched how deep he’d waded out into her waters, only then looking back in search of the shoreline that was his self-possession and panicking that it was completely out of sight.

  


* * *

  


The days pass by, one blurring into the next without the shape of his old routine. After a week, he sends his knights back to Coruscant. They go, amid much protest. The only other person he sees is the former knight of Ren, the one who stayed behind. She’s a dark-skinned human woman, her hair in a profusion of tiny braids with little charms woven into them that make a pleasant tinkling sound when she bends down to tend the garden. She and Rey speak quietly as she pulls the weeds and waters the flowers. He gives them their privacy; their talk is sure to be of things that he neither can understand nor has any need to.

He brought his datapad to Voss with him, and at first he avidly follows the latest Imperial news, anxious that all is proceeding well without him, while subtly hoping that it isn’t. When the time stretches longer, the news begins to lose its fascination for him. The same stories rise and fall, endlessly churning. Instead he finds himself devouring the books he’d always wanted to: biographies of great military leaders like Tarkin and Grievous, histories of the last Empire and the old Republic, works on the latest advances in science and engineering. 

It gives them things to talk about while they eat, or when they sit together on the veranda. Rey spends hours a day in meditation, and often wanders alone in the forest. She never goes far, and on her return she slumps on her sofa, too exhausted to speak. Despite this, they are spending more time together than ever before. They’ve never had time like this, to talk, or just sit, with nothing else pressing to do and no interruptions.

It’s good, if a little dull. Once, he snaps at her out of frustrated boredom, and she raises her eyebrows at him. “Not so easy to live someone else’s life, is it?” she says only, and leaves him alone for the rest of the afternoon.

His favourite moments are when they lie together in bed and roam each other’s memories from better times, when Kylo was with them. Sometimes during the day her control over her abilities fails, and she unexpectedly draws him into a memory. Those recollections are usually darker, from her training with Snoke, or when she was alone on Jakku. She is always startled when she comes out of it, full of apologies.

Just once, she shows him what happened the day Snoke died, how the hand in the light saved her, and the stone she used to hold his mind together. The day after she shares the memory, he is silent and begins to understand the grief that he has been holding at bay, how he denies it with the warmth of her smiles and the soft touch of her lips. 

She is fading. 

She tells him that she is getting closer to the light every day, and he can feel it when he wakes at night to the light of the candle, the Force energy in the room now a roaring fire. Yet some part of her is missing, taken by Snoke. Hux has taken from her too. She used a part of herself to mend him, a piece of her light. The guilt adds to the heavy burden he’s carried since Kylo died. He’d like to ask her if he might put it down, but is afraid of her response.

He grows stronger as she fades. Fearing for her safety, he begins walking with her in the forest, and his confidence in his old legs on the uneven ground increases daily. He doesn’t know how she goes on in her weakened state; she must steal some strength from the Force. Even so, her steps slow sooner each day. He starts planning their route to take them past a bench someone placed for her so they can rest part way. 

They are sitting there quietly one particularly warm afternoon. Sweat is trickling down his back under his loose shirt; they are holding hands, though their palms are clammy and fingers slippery. She has blended their minds together and he is drifting in the light with her, admiring the patterns in the leaves on the ground in front of them. Little things become more meaningful in the Force. Its desires may be oblique, but there is an obvious intent behind its influence on existence. His mind is hazy from the warmth, the energy he feels coursing through her, and thereby through him. 

A far-off shimmer between the trees startles her beside him. He barely glimpsed it and thinks of the warning from the blue-skinned man, of the ancient dangers in the woods that still command the fears of the Voss. Using his connection with Rey, he watches through her eyes as she looks again. The shimmer coalesces into a tall figure in the distance, striding towards them.

Through his own eyes he can see nothing. The duality of the figure being both there and not-there is too disorienting, so he closes his eyes to just look through Rey’s.

He can feel her emotions clearly. She is stunned, frozen in place. The figure is familiar. As it draws closer, he forgets to breathe. How to breathe. That breathing is something that he has ever wanted or needed to do. 

It’s Kylo. 

He’s a young man, younger than when Hux first knew him, a year or two after Leia Organa’s true parentage was so sensationally revealed in the New Republic Senate and the First Order began its rise. Hux hadn’t known then that the imposing masked figure assigned to the ship he joined as a newly promoted colonel was Organa’s son, grandson of Darth Vader. He hadn’t seen Kylo’s face until he took command of the Starkiller project and the _Finalizer_. By then Kylo looked nothing like this smiling vision—Hux doesn’t think he’d ever seen Kylo smile this wide. Instead his face was set in a permanent scowl, golden brown eyes wounded and wary.

The loping walk is the same, those long legs eating up the ground until Kylo is standing before them. No, not Kylo. This is someone else. Ben Organa, the boy left behind when Kylo Ren was born. The weakness Kylo was punished for, again and again. 

He wears robes that Hux identifies as in the style of the Jedi. Ben stands differently, too, an ease through his shoulders, his hands relaxed at his side. His head tilts as he examines them. 

_Look how old you’ve become_. The voice is the same, deep, with a slightly odd rhythm from all his time speaking through a vocoder.

Hux dares to crack his eyelids open. No one is there. His own ears heard nothing, the voice was only in his mind.

Rey makes a choked sound beside him and clutches tighter at his hand. “How—”

Ben’s smile fades, and something about him changes and becomes Kylo. His face is suddenly older, his expression filled with sorrow. _Sacrifice_.

“Stupidity,” Rey says almost over top of him, the word firing out like she’d had it aimed and ready since she saw him. 

_That too_ , he allows. 

Rey is trembling, and Hux presses her hand in comfort, for her and for himself. The sweat on his back is ice cold now. Through Rey’s perceptions in the Force he can see eddies of light washing around Kylo, the darkness that usually surrounded him nowhere to be seen. Everything feels jangled and strange. Her shock mingles with his own, and his brain struggles to interpret the unaccustomed input.

“You left us alone.” Her voice is low and fierce. 

With a graceful movement that Hux envies, Kylo kneels down before them. He shakes his head, long hair swinging slightly. _You were never alone_. He holds up a hand, palm out towards them and splays his long fingers.

“It was you,” she says slowly. 

The warm weight of a third hand rests briefly over theirs, strokes over Hux’s fingers one by one.

Kylo’s eyes gleam with satisfaction. _We did it. We won_.

“I had no idea,” Rey breathes. “I thought maybe Luke, or Anakin even … I never thought you could become…”

_Neither did I_ , he says wryly. _But here we are_.

“It’s good to see you,” Hux blurts out. Then flushes, thinking of his eyes squeezed shut, and how the old Kylo would certainly have mocked him.

But Kylo’s tone is gentle. _Hux. I’ve missed you_. His words are accompanied by a mental caress that is at once familiar, and at the same time, foreign after so many years, and Hux’s mind almost short-circuits in confused pleasure.

“You came for me,” Rey says. “I’m dying.” She has known it of course, but knowing it isn’t the same as saying it out loud.

Kylo nods, kinder than Hux has ever seen him. _There is no death, only the Force._

In the past, phrases like that would have Hux rolling his eyes. Now it feels all too real. Kylo came for Rey, not for him. His heart sinks, and cold dread ices up his limbs. They were going to leave him behind, he was going to be alone, truly alone. “Don’t go.”

_She’s already leaving you, it’s just a matter of time. You can see it, Hux_.

No. No. 

_I don’t want to die alone,_ Hux thinks hard, because he’s too ashamed to say it out loud.

Kylo looks sad. _She gave you some of her time. It’s not up yet_.

“Then you’ll come for me too, when it’s my time?” The eagerness in his voice disgusts him.

_We will be there, at the end_.

Rey’s stab of sorrow is the answer that wasn’t spoken. Force ghosts were Force-users, not Force-blind people like Hux. 

Kylo extends his hand towards Rey. _Come_ , he says. 

She looks deep into Kylo’s eyes, Hux drawn in with her. Behind them, there are galaxies. Kylo gives them a Ben-smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners and his crooked teeth showing. Her hand twitches in Hux’s.

She turns to him and he opens his eyes. Her face is serene. “We both gave something. Now, it’s your turn.” She presses her forehead to his, and his eyes are filling with tears, pressure building in his chest. Her mouth touches his lightly, and she strokes down the side of his beard. Her love swells inside him until he can’t contain both the pain and the joy and has to let it go free in a great gasping sob.

He shuts his eyes again and turns back to Kylo, who is watching him with compassion. _I love you,_ Kylo tells him, and the expanse of light that blazes around the words is blinding. It burns into him and he knows it to be true.

_Take me with you_ , Hux thinks, or says. He’s not sure which, or if the plea only echoes around in his heart. 

Rey pulls her hand from his resisting one. A stone appears in her cupped palm, a tiny pool of liquid light glowing inside. She hands him the stone, closing his fist tight around it. The sharp edges of a rough chip interrupt the smoothness under his fingers, then the feeling of it disappears. She is a part of him. 

_Come,_ Kylo urges. The light sings, it calls to her of home. 

Slowly, they untangle themselves from his mind, the last soft whisper of their connection slipping away like shimmersilk cloth sliding from a polished surface. He opens his eyes. Kylo is gone, but Rey still looks to the spot where he kneels before them. 

She reaches out.

  


* * *

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments are appreciated. :) 
> 
> Special thanks again to my wonderful beta readers [slutpunk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/slutpunk/pseuds/slutpunk) and [Shadowlass](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowlass/pseuds/Shadowlass). I couldn't have done it without both of you! Thanks as well to [Kasamon](http://kasamon.tumblr.com/) and [Juulna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Juulna/pseuds/Juulna) for help with early drafts! And a very special thank you to my writing buddy and fellow fic-consumer [Rachel_greatest](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rachel_greatest/pseuds/rachel_greatest) who was always so encouraging. All of these people are amazing writers in their own right so go check them out!


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